Just days after nine people were hospitalised after a staircase collapsed at Tayto Park last weekend, an even more shocking incident occurred at a theme park in Australia, where four people were killed after an accident on the Thunder River Rapids Ride at Dreamworld, near the Gold Coast.
These incidents follow a similar spate of disasters in the US in August, with four serious accidents in just five days. In one case, a 10-year-old boy died in gruesome circumstances as he rode the 50m “Verrückt”, touted as world’s tallest water slide, in Kansas.
Theme parks rides are considerably safer than driving, but assessing just how safe they are requires comprehensive statistics on attendance and accident rates, which are surprisingly hard to collate.
In the UK, the Health and Safety Executive put the risk of death as one in every 834 million rides, compared to one death in every 125 million journeys by car.
However, in the US, which has the highest number of theme parks, figures are less clear. Regulation of ride safety changes from state to state, with very different inspection regimes – in Kansas, scene of the August fatality, theme parks are able to self-inspect.
The most widely quoted figures on theme park safety come from the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA), an industry body, which claims there are at least 1,000 injuries at US theme parks every year. However, an alternative study by the Nationwide Children’s Hospital in 2013 reported an average of 4,423 injuries in amusement parks each year.
Despite the difficulty in collating accurate statistics, we should be wary of falling prey to an observational selection bias, in which a number of high-profile incidents cause us to overestimate the risks.
Incidents at theme parks are by their nature going to be unusual, and therefore attract more attention, but that is not representative of the risk. After all, road fatalities in Ireland are up by nearly a quarter so far this year, and we still get in our cars every day without a mounting sense of anxiety.
