NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – In some parts of the U.S., the thrill rides that hurl kids upside down, whirl them around or send them shooting down slides are checked out by state inspectors before customers climb on. But in other places, they are not required to get the once-over.
The grisly death of a 10-year-old boy on a Kansas water slide and a Ferris wheel accident that injured three little girls at a county fair in Tennessee this summer have focused attention on what safety experts say is an alarming truth about amusement rides: How closely they are regulated varies greatly from state to state.
“Fifty states in the United States of America and no two inspect rides the same way. That’s wrong,” said Ken Martin, an amusement park safety consultant who has been one of the loudest critics of the nation’s patchwork of state laws. “We’re not close to being in the same book, state to state. We’re not even on the same page of the hymnal. We certainly aren’t singing in key.”
Twenty-nine deaths on amusement rides or water slides have been reported to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission since 2010, spokeswoman Patty Davis said.
The amusement park industry has successfully lobbied against federal oversight for decades, and the CPSC doesn’t regulate rides at permanent parks like the one in Kansas. It oversees only traveling carnival rides, like the Ferris wheel that broke in Tennessee. Even then, federal investigators don’t conduct routine inspections; they respond only after accidents.