Ian-S

Good luck to him, poison dwarf will likely be the interviewer.

The way I see it, it's OK for us to speculate within reason, most here have a basic grasp of how rollercoasters work, in fact far more of a grasp it seems than most of the 'qualified' journalists who are being paid to speculate and assume about what happened, and judge those that were there, over their reactions and how the situation was handled.

This is another example of the media twisting the context to make a story, unfortunate personal experience tells me that had those people been bleeding out, even if they'd have called the emergency services at the time the collision happened, it wouldn't have saved them, you have about 30 seconds to stem the bleeding if the main artery in the leg is severed, after that it's game over. The 11 minutes has likely made no difference overall to the outcome.

Yeah I forgot to say that Thursday and Friday was blanked out (this was before they announced the park was closed tomorrow), but as you say, it indicates nothing other than their website manager is at work LOL.

See my last post, it'll be bad for them not to do that. I didn't think of it until now, but if you try to book an entrance ticket online, the earliest day available is Saturday, could mean absolutely nothing though.

LOL, I saw a petition the other day calling for the entire park to be closed...

From a commercial 'brand' standpoint it is good practice to withdraw/remove any merchandise on a temporary basis after an accident, I wouldn't read too much into it at the moment. They have probably done this to try and minimise bad press, could you imagine the headlines when the place re-opens, if the first thing you saw entering all the shop was a smiler logo? The press would tear them apart with claims of insensitiveness and poor taste saying they were still attempting to profiteer from the ride after what happened etc. As I said a few pages back, I think they'll reopen either at the weekend, or do a soft opening next week, and when they do, the entire ride will have a temporary solid fence around it like the WC16 site at Thorpe does presently to stop ground level gorpers. Does anybody know if they've removed the cars yet from the ride?

Just to butt in here but there was an link posed to the Telegraph article immediately above Ryan's post which is no longer there, so unless Ryan posts otherwise, my impression was he wasn't talking about Mark's theory over what happened, but he could have been referencing a post that is no longer the.

That's the same theory my Dad and I came up with, if it's something simple like that, that happened, only one real question remains, well two, did they know that a block reset would effectively restart the ride without someone pressing 'go', and either way, why did thy do the block reset without first doing a proper count and account on the cars and visual inspection of the track?

Print media is a dying industry, the only way they make money is if people buy the paper, and the only way they can sell the paper nowadays is to fill it with fear porn and over inflated scare stories of how the sky is falling in and we're all doomed, editorial restraint went out the window years ago. I haven't bought a paper or magazine for about 15 years.

I saw a quote earlier 'too much reliance on modern technology lead to the accident'. It was about something completely unrelated in America, but I did think at the time 'sounds familiar'.

Nothing from an official source.

Dunno but as a post-thought, cam nine seems more focused on the pit below the track than the track itself, but I don't know the ride that well so could be wrong. Also LC, that link you posted to the HSE statement, I read it earlier and had to laugh at the editors note bit where it essentially said ride operators had to minimise risk, if park operators took HSE guidelines to the extreme like some industries do, there wouldn't be rides as they'd all break HSE guidelines.

How big are those screen? Each segment doesn't seem to be of decent enough qualify to make out the track let alone a stationary car (I know it's a photo and thank you for posting it, I'm just trying to imagine how someone would accidentilly miss a car stopped on the track).

For the love of God will someone tweet the BBC and tell them the empty car didn't get stuck at the top of a 'loop' and the collision didn't happen there either, for a supposedly professional organisation they really haven't proof read the ****ing script or thought about things logically.

My wife just told me to stop watching the news cos I kept shouting at the TV whenever they were saying that LOL.

All pleasure activities can be dangerous Zach, just ask Leslie Ash. Perhaps it's my age but I don't consider any of these rides 100% safe, I was an engineer by trade so know that no matter how many precautions you take, bad things happen, but nor do I go around expecting everything to break on me. I'm happy to take the risk. The ride didn't 'break' in the literal sense either, from what little info we have the accident was caused by a computer or human error (or a combination of both), of which both could just as easily happen on the way to the park in a car, or in the plane going to Spain. Now if the track needed weekly rebuilding because it was tearing itself apart, or collisions were a regular occurrence, I would think twice yes, indeed I would, but not at the moment.

Nearly everybody have asked me today whether I'm still going in the couple weeks, my answer is of course if the park is open I'll be there, one said they would never go on another rollercoaster to which I responded I hope you've cancelled your holiday in Spain then because you're going to have to get on a plane to get there and they crash too, it instantly shut them up and bought them back to earth from the media hysteria.

Sounds like everybody did an fantastic job given the circumstances. I hope Merlin look after their staff and don't just brush them aside (I don't mean financially), paramedics and firemen are trained to cope in such situations, but a kid barely out of school in their first job, doubtful.

LOL, might have been Rush I was thinking of, or that other one where the shoulder harness comes down automatically like a guillotine. But Saw was bloody uncomfortable.

LOL no, that's not how H&S works.

According to a poster on Towers Street (who nobody seem to question), the batwing section is not covered by the CCTV system, so in theory, the operator in the control room would have had no idea there was a car stuck there.

It felt more like I was getting a free vasectomy when I went on it.

Excuse the noob, but what are trims?

Can see it reopening Saturday or Monday, depending what the HSE say. Interestingly worded statement from the HSE too: