Every day in the United States, between 6 and 8 million rides are taken at amusement parks and facilities, and an equal number of rides are taken around the rest of the world. Meanwhile, rides are getting faster, riders demand bigger thrills, and parks are increasing their offerings by leaps and bounds. And yet, remarkably, safety problems are so rare that when they do occur, they make for big news. Unfortunately, that’s a paradox the industry must contend with. Even as strides are taken to ensure ever-safer parks and rides, anything short of perfection can be depicted as disaster by the media. How best, then, to deal with the fact that a single mishap can effect a worldwide industry? Prevention, that’s how. But while this is a fine answer in theory, it becomes quite complicated when attempts are made to put safety standards into practice. As things stand now, many different standards are used in different places, while some parts of the industry subscribe to one common standard but not others. Canada has its own set of standards, as do Europe and Australia. In America, states and local jurisdictions often operate under their own regulations and unique practices. Randy Davis, IAAPA’s vice president for government relations, believes that having uniform standards for manufacturers is a good idea. “Uniform standards can be good for business,” he explains. “The goal is that manufacturers anywhere in the world will be able to sell their products everywhere. The entire industry could benefit from that.” Fortunately, groups and associations from around the globe are working to define their safety and design standards and are making an effort to harmonize those efforts so that eventually a world-wide standard can be put in place. IAAPA, for example, recently held the second meeting of its International Standards Harmonization Group. Representatives from France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, the United Kingdom., and the United States met in Paris, in conjunction with the Euro Amusement Show. Once individual areas of ride safety standards meet with consensus, members will take that agreement to their respective standards organizations and work for its adoption as part of each standard. The recent meeting concluded with a decision to first consider acceleration limits. Fencing, guardrails, steps and ramps, and catwalks will be deliberated on at the next meeting, in July 2004. The American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) is another organization working toward the goal of uniform standards. ASTM International is a not-for-profit organization that provides a global forum for the development and publication of voluntary consensus standards, and its effort, known as International Amusement Ride Standard Harmonization, is an ongoing attempt to develop a universal standard for amusement rides. To this end, in 1998 the ASTM Design and Manufacturing subcommittee formed a task force to perform a comprehensive review of all world standards for amusement parks. Wherever possible, the proposed ASTM standard is adopting requirements from other standards that make evaluation of ride manufacturing the same regardless of the country of manufacture or the location of the installation. The four issues under scrutiny are guest safety, restraints devices, clearance envelopes, and exposure to acceleration limits. New Jersey While the standards are being fine-tuned and debated, some states have taken action on their own to implement standards. New Jersey recently enacted new standards, and its experience offers an interesting case study of the difficulties and successes that can come with implementing new standards. New Jersey had long overseen its ride industry through the state Department of Labor, but in 1998 Governor Christine Whitman decided to move oversight to the Department of Community Affairs, which typically deals with public safety codes. Community Affairs began a review of the existing state regulations, the main enforcement mechanism of which was site inspections by state regulators. But before the review could be finished, there was a double fatality on a new ride that was manufactured out of state. “That accident sent shock waves from New Jersey out to the entire industry,” says Lary Zucker, who is counsel to the New Jersey Amusement Association (NJAA). “The state found that the manufacturer had violated a number of standards and fined them about $35,000.” Complications arose when a judge found that New Jersey had jurisdiction over sites, but not manufacturers. “The state’s reaction to that,” says Zucker, “was to declare that it couldn’t ensure the safety of rides unless it had jurisdiction over manufacturers, too. In the summer of 2000, the state offered legislation that would require all manufacturers to register in the state.” The glitch was that New Jersey only intended to allow companies with what it deemed a “good safety record” to register. This proposal met with heated opposition because the Department of Community Affairs had no clear definition of what constituted a good safety record, and the NJAA didn’t want to leave that issue in the hands of state bureaucrats. After hearings and negotiations, a compromise was reached that satisfied state regulators, manufacturers, and park operators—a system called type certification of rides was introduced. It was a new concept for amusements, but the idea was borrowed directly from the airline industry. Instead of seeking approval for every type of 747 that Boeing makes, for example, the company applies for permission to manufacture the basic style of plane. For amusement rides in New Jersey, each generic type of ride needs to be officially certified. While this government action was a big step forward, it wasn’t a cure-all. In fact, the state of New Jersey quickly found that rides often underwent significant modifications after the initial manufacturing process. In the summer of 2001 the state addressed this situation with a statute requiring any ride that receives significant modification to reapply for certification. Still, this second attempt at regulation serves as a good example of why the oversight issue and development of standards will be an ongoing, perhaps never-ending process. “It goes on and on,” Zucker says. “Once the statute was enacted, the state had to promulgate the actual regulations, and they decided they wanted to limit G-forces and implement their own design code, independent of ASTM or any other code in the world.” The NJAA brought in experts from around the world to make the argument that the state should follow ASTM, but because those standards are still a work in progress, New Jersey felt no compunction to adopt unfinished codes. In the end, the state came up with it’s own set of standards, and New Jersey is presently the only jurisdiction in the world that has its own independent ride design certification. “The ride design code is similar to ASTM, but it’s important to note that they’re not exactly the same,” says Zucker. The differences point out the complexities involved in trying to come up with any uniform code. For example, the state has its own unique system of state inspectors. Park operators are trained to do the inspection work, and the state can make a good argument as to why this way works best, but next door in Pennsylvania, hundreds of site inspectors work for the state, and those people will tell you their way is better. Russia In other parts of the world, the interest in uniform standards is equally strong. In Russia, for instance, the amusement industry was in serious disrepair by the end of the communist regime in the early 1990s. Few parks offered mechanized rides, and enforcing what little regulation existed had not much concerned Soviet bureaucrats. With the coming of capitalism, however, the Russian population took a greater interest in leisure parks, new companies like PAX began building rides, and business boomed. PAX in particular has thrived. It designs, builds, and markets roller coasters, Ferris wheels, free-fall towers and swings, and it generates some $80 million in revenue. The company not only dominates the Russian market, but it competes in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East (where it recently built the highest coaster in the region). Being at the forefront of these expanding markets means that PAX must give consideration to a variety of safety standards, and the company has gone to great lengths not only to comply with various codes, but also to test and develop standards that can be used internationally. PAX founder Vladimer Gnezdilov, an engineer during the Soviet regime, helped form the Russian Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (RAAPA) with the intent that it would develop ride safety standards that would suit the Russian market and ensure that other countries—the United States in particular—would be confident when buying Russian products. Gnezdilov was also supportive when the Russian government adopted basic technical regulations and maintenance standards, and he encouraged a study of G-forces by a group of Russian aerospace engineers. The report, which was finalized in late 2003, was an attempt to find quantifiable limits for human exposure and thereby prevent injury. “When we first set up the company, we had no idea what level of G-force on a high-speed ride a person can safely stand,” he told media outlets. “We have been working together for many years and have even tested out the theoretical results on our own rides using dummies instrumented to measure acceleration in three axes.” PAX and RAAPA continue to research and develop proposals on this issue. The World How developments like Russia’s research and New Jersey’s new regulations will affect the goal of uniform standards remains unclear. Some argue that actions like these push the industry to finalize its world harmonization standards sooner rather than later, while others think that with every new set of standards and possible regulations comes a whole new array of problems and considerations that guarantee further debate and delay. For its part, ASTM continues to facilitate the initiation and drafting of standards. Recently it launched a new Work Item Registration system, which will increase transparency during the ongoing development of ASTM consensus standards. The system is accessible on the ASTM web site and allows any interested individual from anywhere in the world to check on the progress of any specific standard. ASTM International president James Thomas says, “The added openness, available to everybody, contributes to a better understanding of the work being performed by ASTM members. This attracts more interested parties and increases international application of ASTM standards.” Meanwhile IAAPA’s harmonization group plans to meet again at the IAAPA Asian Expo in Singapore, and future steps in the process will be discussed at that time. And so the work toward unified standards carries on. With so much energy and effort focused on the project, observers believe progress will certainly continue.