When thrill-seekers attend theme and/or amusement parks they expect to be scared but not scared for their lives. It seems reports of theme park accidents are happening more and more frequently. These disasters can be prevented by both the passengers and the technichans.

It’s disconcerning when a person witnssess or hears about an accident associated with one of these rides but some of them are downright terrifying.  On September 8 the Festival Swing ride at the carnival in Norwalk, Conneticut suddenly stopped, causing the riders to crash into each other.  On June 21, 2007 a 13- year old lost her feet on the Superman tower of power ride when a cable broke and snapped both legs from her body. On June 28, 2008 a teenager jumped over a fence to retrieve his fallen hat and was decapitated by the Batman roller coaster in Six Flags over Georgia. And worst of all, on July 19 of this year a woman was on the Texas Giant roller coaster in Six Flags over Texas when she fell to her death after explaining to the employee working the ride  she didn’t feel her safety bar was secure. These horredities shouldn’t have happened and could have been preveted.

These ‘glitches’ should not happen when dealing with something as valueable as a person’s life. If a technician, manufacturer or employee wants to be careless, they can do so with their own lives.

The riders are also careless at times especially in the case of the Batman incident in which the teen was completley and utterly at fault. He jumped over the fence against every rule, and sign that advised against it in order to retrieve something as petty as a baseball cap, and he paid for it with his life.

The employee in charge of the Texas Giant roller coaster obviously didn’t care enough about safety to prevent the obvious problem with the security of the ride he was managing. If he did, he would have taken time to examine safety bar.

These problems can be easily prevented with caution on the employees part, thouroughness on the technicans part, and careful thinking on the riders part. If we all do this then we should be safe, but if a person were to want absolute safety they wouldn’t get on the rides at all.