Should You Worry About Dying at an Amusement Park?
Everyone's worst amusement park nightmare came true over the weekend: A woman who wasn't properly secured in a roller coaster at Six Flags in Arlington, Texas fell out, and died. So . . . should you worry about dying at an amusement park?
The answer is . . . no. Absolutely not. According to the most recent statistics, in 2011, about 1,415 people were injured on amusement park rides in the U.S. That sounds like a lot . . . but people took 1.7 billion rides in 2011.
That means only 0.000000008% of amusement park rides ended with someone getting injured. In other words, only about one out of every 1.2 million rides ended in an injury.
They don't have firm stats on the number of deaths, but "USA Today" believes there might've only been one amusement park death in 2011.
Staff at Darien Lake Theme Park in Syracuse, New York let an Iraq War veteran who lost both of his legs ride a roller coaster . . . even though the safety regulations required riders to have two legs.
Tragically, he slipped out of the seat and fell 150 feet to his death.