then why bother riding the thing?
i don't mean to sound rude but there are risks involved with basically anything we do in life, walking across the street, driving a car, riding on a bus, flying on an airplane, this is no different.....nothing is fool proof.....if you don't want to take the risk, don't ride on the god dang ride, its simple, a roller coaster could fly off the track just as easily, if you don't want to take the risk, don't do it, its your own choice
I didn't ride it. And this is not the same as a roller coaster coming off the track. This is a "boat" so to speak that is propelled by gravity and water, and it is not attached to the slide by any means. The "safety straps" to keep people in are Velcro, and designed like a car seat belt - diagonal across the shoulder to the waist, and one across the hips.
Editing to add that each boat has to weigh between 400-550 lbs also, in order to be heavy enough to stay on the slide but light enough to make the hills.
When the ride begins, the boat plummets 70 feet and achieves a speed of 65 mph in approximately 3-5 seconds. It then goes up a smaller hill and back down, then slows to a de-boarding area.
The safety screen was originally not part of the ride, but the tests of the first version had the boats and the dummies flying off over and over. The had to re-design it, re-construct some of it, and it finally opened after being delayed 3 times.
Part of the re-design was adding the safety screen above it just in case the boat did fly off, which may be what happened here. The other possibility is that the Velcro strap unfastened or wasn't tight enough to hold the boy in. Either way, though, the safety net is what caused the death. (Editing again to say well, the combination of the physics of the ride and the safety net are the cause.)
On a regular roller coaster, the cars are attached the the track and there are electronic monitoring systems that help ensure safety. Of course they're not 100% safe.
The design flaws in this slide were apparent from the start, and the fixes weren't good enough. There are other things that could have been implemented to ensure safety and lower the risk of injury and death even farther.