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Here's a very tragic story, and I am curious if CBS will either pull or postpone the next episode of CSI because of it....
Yesterday afternoon at Six Flags New England, a man died after being thrown from the Superman roller coaster. I have not seen any details yet on how the accident happend, although one of the passengers on the coaster says in the linked news story, "All of a sudden people started screaming: `Stop the ride, stop the ride, someone has fallen off.' They finally stopped the ride and it was extreme panic and we looked and all the people in the cars were crying. We looked over to the side and there was a gentleman laying by the fence.'' Another witness said, "He started spinning like a Frisbee and he hit the rail - bam - and then fell down on the ground.''
Now, if you are a fan of CSI and watched last week's episode, you may have seen the preview for this week's show. The plot surrounds a roller coaster that derails, ejecting six passengers from the ride. If I remeber the teaser properly, there is at least one shot of passengers pinwheeling out of the roller coaster car and falling to their deaths. I'm willing to bet that at least in New England this episode gets pulled for now.
Interestingly, this is not the first time that this has happened to CSI. One of the early episodes of (the extremely mediocre) CSI: Miami featured the hunt for a sniper who was randomly picking off Miami citizens. It was pulled from its initial airing when the DC Sniper case hit the news less than a week before the episode was supposed to be shown. Sadly, that seemed to give the CSI: Miami writers an idea, and they later went on to do an episode that intentionally mimicked the Rhode Island nightclub fire. Even worse, they cast poor Ben Browder as the culprit in a role that was a real step-down from his work on Farsape.
In any case, my heart goes out to the family and friends of Stanley Morbarsky. A person shouldn't die just because they wanted a little thrill from riding on a coaster. I have no idea what the restraint system is like on this particular coaster, but there is never an excuse for the restraints to fail. The only ways for him to have been ejected from the vehicle are faulty maintenance that caused it to fail, or else faulty oversight from the ride attendants performing the loading safety check. I sincerely doubt if Mr. Morbarsky was trying to defeat the restraints, but even if he was he shouldn't have been able to. No matter how you look at it, this is another black eye for the theme park industry.
Yesterday afternoon at Six Flags New England, a man died after being thrown from the Superman roller coaster. I have not seen any details yet on how the accident happend, although one of the passengers on the coaster says in the linked news story, "All of a sudden people started screaming: `Stop the ride, stop the ride, someone has fallen off.' They finally stopped the ride and it was extreme panic and we looked and all the people in the cars were crying. We looked over to the side and there was a gentleman laying by the fence.'' Another witness said, "He started spinning like a Frisbee and he hit the rail - bam - and then fell down on the ground.''
Now, if you are a fan of CSI and watched last week's episode, you may have seen the preview for this week's show. The plot surrounds a roller coaster that derails, ejecting six passengers from the ride. If I remeber the teaser properly, there is at least one shot of passengers pinwheeling out of the roller coaster car and falling to their deaths. I'm willing to bet that at least in New England this episode gets pulled for now.
Interestingly, this is not the first time that this has happened to CSI. One of the early episodes of (the extremely mediocre) CSI: Miami featured the hunt for a sniper who was randomly picking off Miami citizens. It was pulled from its initial airing when the DC Sniper case hit the news less than a week before the episode was supposed to be shown. Sadly, that seemed to give the CSI: Miami writers an idea, and they later went on to do an episode that intentionally mimicked the Rhode Island nightclub fire. Even worse, they cast poor Ben Browder as the culprit in a role that was a real step-down from his work on Farsape.
In any case, my heart goes out to the family and friends of Stanley Morbarsky. A person shouldn't die just because they wanted a little thrill from riding on a coaster. I have no idea what the restraint system is like on this particular coaster, but there is never an excuse for the restraints to fail. The only ways for him to have been ejected from the vehicle are faulty maintenance that caused it to fail, or else faulty oversight from the ride attendants performing the loading safety check. I sincerely doubt if Mr. Morbarsky was trying to defeat the restraints, but even if he was he shouldn't have been able to. No matter how you look at it, this is another black eye for the theme park industry.