Amusement park death highlights need for safety

An article in USA Today about a 10-year-old boy who was killed in a waterpark accident on Sunday and the need for greater safety in amusement parks quotes Jun Zhuang, associate professor of industrial and systems engineering in the UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, who said it is virtually impossible to test water slides for all possible combinations of weather and wind conditions.“The newly designed tallest, fastest, steepest water slides … attain higher and higher speeds and become more and more dangerous,” he said.

Zhuang said that the design process starts with many assumptions, including how securely people are restrained, and in the end a rider is a “lab mouse” because conditions vary so widely.

"Because of the incredibly large accelerations, similar effects as whiplash in auto accidents can occur," he said. "There needs to be extensive testing to understand and mitigate these large accelerations, and standards must be updated."