Albeit not the greatest story of holiday cheer, I came across this video on YouTube tonight. The clip, from 1987, contains a short collection of news reports about a death on one of the Lightnin' Loops rollercoasters, at Six Flags Great Adventure, in New Jersey. The way the ride was set up, there were two separate shuttle looping coasters, with interlocking vertical loops. They would be sent off at the same time so that both trains would be in the loops together.
In this particular accident, a girl's "over the shoulder restraint" (or OTSR) lowered behind her in the seat. According to the safety systems and ride operations, it looked like the OTSR was down, giving the "OK" to launch the train. The problem was that the girl was not safely restrained beneath it. The train took off, abruptly went over the drop, and into the loop, where she fell onto track below and then was later struck by the train as it came back into the loop. Lightnin' Loops closed for good in 1992, and was dismantled entirely the next year to make room for Batman the Ride (check out the Lightnin' Loops page at Amusement Pics dot com for some photos and more history).
I remember this story from when I was back in 7th grade. I still have a newspaper clipping of when it happened. This one family in my old neighborhood had relatives from up in Jersey, and every year they would go up to visit. Sometimes they would go to Great Adventure... other times they would visit Action Park (which warrants another set of stories altogether, considering it's nickname from back then was "Traction Park" due to all the injuries and lawsuits). When I heard the news of the Lightnin' Loops incident, I grilled the brothers for information about this ride and anything they'd heard about the accident. It's yet another crazy memory from the odyssey ramble...
Here's the news report:
2008-12-17
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