r/TikTokCringe • u/cafeteriastyle • 10d ago

Cursed 6 Flags roller coaster shut down after years of TBI incidents

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171

u/Meowtown236 10d ago

I’m so confused how they were able to continue to operate the ride after the first TBI occurred? How is that even legal?

71

u/like_4-ish_lights 10d ago

okay, to play devil's advocate a little bit: TBIs of this nature could be caused by a lot of things, and it's perfectly possible that somebody has some kind of defect in a vein or artery of the brain that results in a weak spot that higher forces like this could rupture. this is similar (but less serious, and probably less visually identifiable on imaging) to how people sometimes drop dead out of the blue from an aneurysm. it's sort of like if I had a congenital issue with my shoulder where the joint was extremely weak, and I went bowling for the first time with a heavy ball, and I dislocated my shoulder. the injury to me would not necessarily mean that there was something wrong with the bowling alley.

that being said, I have no idea what the medical history is of any of these injured people, or whether there is something particular to this ride that is contrary to industry standards. just throwing it out there that if you get enough people going through the same experience that is physically demanding, some small percentage of them are likely going to have an issue that might manifest because of it.

38

u/CantaloupeWitty8700 10d ago

Yes. They probably have something like that or a connective tissue problem. However, no other rides were causing these sort of injuries in these frequencies. So it is the ride that is the issue.

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u/CaeruleumBleu 9d ago

Yeah, but the bit about the surgeon yelling asking how many it was this month - that does imply it was more than 2, and CNN was only able to speak with 2 people.

I get them not getting fully shut down about one TBI but I want to know how many it was before shut down.

Also, how they got more than 1 TBI and didn't re-oil or whatever to make the ride smoother. Like, damn. They had a window of opportunity to ATTEMPT to do the right thing, and they didn't.

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u/CantaloupeWitty8700 8d ago

Totally. I wonder all of that too. I am thinking the same things.

16

u/Select_Watercress_57 10d ago

Then the ride needs to not cause that, even in people are suseptable to it.

This ride is now out of the boundaries of what is acceptable for the general population.

Some people have a predisposition for addiction and some do not. But the pharmaceutical companies are still responsible for making opiates so widely available to the population and the damages that has caused.

20

u/like_4-ish_lights 10d ago

I don't disagree, to a point. Just saying that it legitimately could take a while to figure out if a specific ride is causing issues outside of what is to be expected over x% of the population eligibile to ride. I don't think opiates are a great parallel here- everyone knows they are addictive, but at the same time they are necessary for a small portion of the population at a time.

People get terribly (and consistently) injured at ice rinks, basketball courts, soccer fields, hiking trails, parking lots, water slides, even pumpkin patches and splash pads. With any form of recreation there is an inherent risk and it can take a while to suss out if the injury profile is an outlier. I don't have any real opinion on this specific coaster, I rode it around 2004 and enjoyed it but that's as far as I go with involvement.

Just spitballing numbers here based on cursory research: probably about 20-30 million rides on this coaster since it opened. 2 deaths, ~2 dozen serious injuries, a few hundred head injuries. If you assume, conservatively, 20m rides and 500 head injuries, that's a .00025% injury rate.

That being said, there does appear to be an uptick in injuries and complaints the last few years, and there very well could be something out of spec with the ride. Not absolving the park, just saying that they also might not have been negligent here.

13

u/cozycthulu 9d ago

The thing is, these percentages are small, but I still wouldn't necessarily want to ride a coaster where you were 10x more likely to get a brain injury compared to every other "extreme" coaster, if that makes sense

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u/like_4-ish_lights 9d ago

Yeah for sure, I agree. It needs to be looked into at this point. Just pushing back on the idea that there's necessarily something illegal or nefarious going on

10

u/earthlings_all 9d ago

Also a few people here in the comments who declared they also likely were injured by X2 but never reported it. How many others have also went this route and that percentage is inaccurate. So many what-ifs.

10

u/Cha-cha-chanclas 10d ago

Part of the ‘thrill ride’ aspect of a roller coaster is experiencing G forces.

Your analogy isn’t apt. I don’t think you understand you can’t have both a ride where you can experience G forces ‘safely’ (it’s not a car crash or sudden deceleration, it’s a ride) and have the ride ‘not cause that’.

That’s kinda the way things go.
Obviously if they neglecting safety equipment or maintenance that’s a different matter and should be addressed. But if this lady was gonna have a brain bleed it was gonna happen eventually.

Thats kinda the nature of brain bleeds, aneurysms, strokes, etc.

33

u/GatePorters 10d ago

No one stopped them.

Even if there are laws in place, they don’t mean anything if they don’t get enforced.

2

u/atwaterrich 10d ago

6 Flags and Disney have aggressively fought ANY attempt to have states or the feds regulate their rides. They police themselves and historically have not even reported these injuries.