Last week, a woman suffered a fatal fall from a roller coaster in Texas, but researchers say that no one knows how many people are injured or killed on roller coasters every year, according to NBC News.
Rosy Ayala-Goana suffered a fatal fall from the Texas Giant roller coaster at Six Flags Over Texas on Friday. The amusement park advertises the ride as the world's steepest wooden roller coaster, rising 14 stories and running 4,900 feet.
These deaths attract media coverage because they seem rare, but there isn't any scientific way to track the deaths, Dr. Gary A. Smith, the director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, said.
"We don't have a really good system for catching all of these," Smith said. This year, he published a study tracking kids younger than 18 who are injured on roller coasters, carnivals and kiddie rides. "Many of these go unmonitored and unaddressed."
Smith found that approximately 4,400 children are hurt on these rides every year, which comes out to up to 20 kids a day in the peak season between May and September. No studies have been conducted on adult amusement park injuries. That research would require a line-by-line review of data from U.S. emergency department reports.
"If we started looking, we would find similar numbers," Smith said.
The data Smith had access to didn't include deaths. He used the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, which only logs injuries. There were 52 deaths tied to amusement park rides that were logged between 1990 and 2004, according to a 2005 report by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).
That agency no longer tracks the data. Web sites such as RideAccidents.com, which posts headlines pertaining to deaths and injuries that are reported in the media, are the best source of data currently available.
Without data on the frequency of accidental injury and death, there is little means of prevention, Smith said. There is no state or federal agency responsible for enforcing amusement park safety.
The CPSC only has authority over mobile amusement rides that travel between towns.
There are 17 states that have no inspection agencies. Six Flags Over Texas has stated that they will be conducting their own investigation into the death.
Approximately 297 million people safely rode 1.7 billion rides in the U.S. in 2011, according to the officials with the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions.
Smith still thinks there should be a basic tracking system for injuries and deaths.
"We should have a better way to monitor these types of injuries so when we see a pattern, we can address them," he said.
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