restraint of Loup Garou failed

[thomas2]

I found an article in Het Laatste Nieuws on may 5th that a restraint of the wooden coaster Loup Garou (of Weerwolf in Dutch) failed during a ride, leaving a passenger unprotected in his seat.

 

Why the restraint opened isn't completely clear, but many think a piece of metal within the restraint broke of.

 

The ride has some decent airtime so I can imagine it must have been terrifying for the passenger!

[RCfanatic]

Yeah i heard about that on one of the Belgian forums, its strange a piece of metal can break off so easily, or whatever happened to it.

 

I hope they find out the cause because this is looking kind of scary, especially on a coaster with that much airtime (Weerwolf is great!), Anywho, i'm sure that poor guy won't be riding any roller coasters again for quite some time...

[zingo]

to add a funnty fact, the parks said that the rider was in no-danger. They say you only need those thing when you go inverted!

[Carnage]

^ Techically on most wooden roller coasters the seat belt is considered the primary restaraint.

 

I always found that odd, but I guess situations like this are where it makes sense.

[RCoasterny]

It might have been a connecting piece or a small piece that had a weak point that was tied into the function of the restraint. Does Vekoma's wooden train use ratcheting type or hydraulic type restraint?

[TheGreatOne]

I imagine they go through normal off-season maintenance similar to how we do it here in America. The question is...Did they completely miss this or did something severe enough happen between now and then to cause metal to break? I imagine for a restraint to fail that it takes a decent size of metal to break. Can anybody possibly explain some technical of restraints?

 

Scary stuff...but that's why seatbelts mean a lot on rides.

[Corkscrewed]

Wow, that's scary! I've never heard of a documented case of coaster restraint failure like that!

 

Good thing it had the seatbelts. That's a good lesson: always buckle the belt properly no matter what.

[Hurricane]

I know SLC's and Corkscrews use racheting, But i'm not sure about their woodies, Sorry.

[DerekRx]

I know of a couple instances where the lapbar has popped up during a ride for whatever reason, but in every circumstance the ride also had a seatbelt so the passenger was safe. Not that the rider would have fallen out from extreme air or anything otherwise.

[ECZenith]

Bad news... but at least the rider wasn't hurt at all. That's all the counts.

[Jon Sabo]

I can only imagine the investigation is going to dig DEEP into the maintenance logs. When I worked at BGE &BGA the policies for maintenance logging was (and I agree with it) strict. Most people don't realize that document is similar to the airline industry where when it is signed and becomes and official document (along with legal/binding issues attatched).

During the parks off-season, most maintenance manuals require x-ray of those parts (depending on the specific part in question). In this case, if it is a restraint (part), the parts are supposed to be rebuilt (and/or replace in a specified time). Dealing with a restraint failure, no matter how minor or severe, is a BIG deal and the legal rammifications (fines/firing, etc) could be huge. It appears from the reports on this post that no one was killed or injured, but it appears the park will have some explaining to do and have a closer look at its maintenance policies.

[Wishmaster]

@ Carnage & Corkscrewed: In europe, most wooden coasters don't have seatbelts! Without the restraint the rider was completely unprotected.

 

@ RCoasterny: Vekoma uses ratcheting type restraints.

 

I'm shure the ride was maintained and inspected properly, but things like metal fatigue are really hard to spot. (even impossible with the naked eye) So I guess all those years of severe beatings in the first drop finaly took their toll on the trains.

[rollermonkey]

I had an OTSR pop partially open on me once.

(The ride was a Top Fun Typhoon @ Magic World, Licola, Italy it's just outside Naples.)

It was terrifying and painful.

I got right back on, but I sat in a different seat!

[thomas2]

Well Weerwolf only has a lapbar, no seatbelts. It's really scary if you know this. The lapbar also went completely open, not just a little bit. The rider could have been launched out anytime. Brr...

 

Walibi took the train out of circuit, but 15 minutes later is was back on track...