Accident
20-year-old Gemma Savage died on 21 June 2001 following an accident the previous day when two carriages collided on the "Treetop Twister", a spinning Wild Mouse roller coaster, which had opened in May that year. Police decided not to prosecute a maintenance worker, who claimed that he had only received an hour's training on that ride and had not seen its manual. Faulty wiring had also caused a malfunction on the ride. In October 2004 Deputy Coroner John Sleightholme at Skipton Magistrates' Court ruled death by misadventure.
Lightwater Valley's owners and electrician Eric Butters admitted breaching health and safety laws at Leeds Crown Court on 14 November 2006. Lightwater Valley Attractions Ltd was charged with failing to ensure the health and safety of riders, Butters was charged with failing to ensure safety through his work. Both pleaded guilty. A French manufacturer, Reverchon Industries SA, was convicted of two charges of failing to ensure the ride's safe design and construction.
Read more about this topic: Lightwater Valley
Famous quotes containing the word accident:
“It wasn’t by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“Predictions of the future are never anything but projections of present automatic processes and procedures, that is, of occurrences that are likely to come to pass if men do not act and if nothing unexpected happens; every action, for better or worse, and every accident necessarily destroys the whole pattern in whose frame the prediction moves and where it finds its evidence.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“There is a limit to the application of democratic methods. You can inquire of all the passengers as to what type of car they like to ride in, but it is impossible to question them as to whether to apply the brakes when the train is at full speed and accident threatens.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)