Safe at Any Speed

Speed Thrills - Greg Hale, Disney's new chief of safety, stands tall on the new Primeval Whirl at Animal Kingdom in Orlando.

"We are currently experiencing technical difficulties on the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster. We will advise you on our progress."

"The engineers are here—it's going to be a wait," Emmett Peter, Director of Ride & Show Project Development at the Walt Disney World Resort tells me, pointing to a group of men in a huddle near the track as the message is broadcast. While waiting in line to ride Disney/MGM's newest roller coaster, I learned from Emmett that it starts out with a 1.3-G catapult-style launch, followed by an immediate double loop, a series of banked turns, and a barrel roll. Gulp. With the ride seemingly down for the count, I'm trying hard not to act visibly relieved. I didn't know that I would be expected to try out one of Disney's most extreme rides while reporting this article on how Disney's new Chief of Safety, Greg Hale, and the amusement park industry are working to ensure amusement park rides are safe. The interesting part of the whole story is that the engineers who design these rides face a basic dichotomy: Their whole goal is to make you feel like your life is in danger, yet have a design that is absolutely safe.

A little more than a year after the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) issued a much-disputed report indicating an increase in ride-related injuries and amidst much hype in the press about amusement park safety, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts appointed engineer Greg Hale to be its first Chief Safety Officer in June 2002.

Fast Lane - Disney/MGM's Rock'n'Roller Coaster -- one of the newest high-thrill rides -- goes form 0 to 60 mph in 2.8 seconds flat.

Safety has always been a hallmark of Disney, In fact, Hale, a 14-year veteran of the company, previously was responsible for operational safety. What's different about his new role is that he will oversee and facilitate the exchange of safety-related information and make sure that consistent standards are implemented across Disney parks worldwide. By sharing information, Disney hopes to institutionalize best safety practices at all properties.

What Hale does is sure to influence the rest of the industry, through his involvement with the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM). For the past decade and a half, he has been a member of the ASTM Committee F24, an independent standards-writing body that is responsible for developing amusement ride safety standards. Essentially a consensus process, it involves balancing different and often opposing interests among theme park operators, ride manufacturers, regulatory agencies, consumer advocates, and other interested parties.

Nothing polarizes people more than safety. Which means that Hale has his work cut out for him in a challenging job.

An unassuming man in his late forties with a preference for casual attire, Hale just may be the ideal person for the position. A self-proclaimed tinkerer who says he's always liked fixing things ("though I always had a few parts left over—it drove my mother crazy"), Hale graduated at the top of his class at the University of Mississippi with a degree in electrical engineering. He first worked in the petrochemical industry, then joined Olin Corp.'s Winchester Division in designing control systems for the manufacturing of explosives. Although of course designing the system was not as dangerous as operating it, the job nonetheless was a true trial by fire in safety management.

Getting hired at Disney in 1988 was more or less a fluke. Responding to an ad in the newspaper, Hale figured he probably wouldn't get the job, but hoped he might at least get a peek at some cool stuff behind the scenes. Since then, he's actually done all kinds of that cool stuff himself, all relating to attraction design, operation, and safety at Walt Disney World.

Works Well With Others

Engineers who have worked with Hale first remark on his technical acumen. "Greg's a very detail oriented engineer, a very smart guy," says Mike Withers, VP of Show/Ride Engineering for Walt Disney Imagineering.

"He's a creative thinker and a good engineer," says Dale Stafford, VP of Global Fastpass at Disney. Stafford once asked Greg for ideas on how to create additional capacity for the ride It's a Small World. "He didn't just have one idea like, 'Build a bigger boat.' He had something like six ideas," recalls Stafford. In fact, Hale is one of the inventors and patent holders on Disney's Fastpass system, which revolutionized the theme park industry by eliminating long lines at popular attractions.

Then they describe his uncanny skill for finding common ground in situations where none seems to exist. "Greg has this unique ability to be impartial and listen to the many sides of an issue, then come up with a solution that meets everyone's expectations," says Jim Seay, president of Premier Rides, a roller coaster manufacturer, and co-chairman of the ASTM F24 Design and Manufacturing Committee for Amusement Park Rides and Devices.

That skill has served Hale particularly well in his work with Seay and others to develop new technical standards for the amusement park industry. Because it is a consensus process, things can get laborious. Even a single negative vote (out of some 300 members) that's ruled persuasive requires re-balloting. Although the screaming and shouting are mostly things of the past, hundreds and hundreds of hours can go into debating the seemingly tiniest of points. All-nighters have been known to happen.

New Standards Raise Bar

Early this year, the ASTM F-24 World Standards Task Force expects to issue a new standard, known as the Standard Practice for the Design of Amusement Rides and Devices or Z9591Z. The result of literally tens of thousands of hours devoted to discussion and debate among technical experts from around the world, the 80-page document contains extremely detailed data on the design and manufacture of amusement park rides.

"In my opinion, we've really kicked things up a few notches in areas such as patron restraint," says Imagineering's Withers, chairman of the task force. "The standard now provides parameters that will help a ride designer determine the appropriate type of restraint based on the specific G-force loading."

The controversial issue of G-force limits is also for the first time being addressed in the new standard. There has been much debate in the research community on whether or not some high G-force roller coasters produce sufficient "head rotational acceleration" to cause brain in-juries. (The most recent development has been the release of a National Institute of Health sponsored study by the University of Pennsylvania that determined that the peak accelerations produced by some high thrill coasters—including the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster—were below the threshold required to produce brain injuries.) The standard will include upper limits (that vary by exposure time) for 3 axes (xyz) of G-force. This will be more comprehensive than the Euro Norm CEN standards for amusement park ride design, which themselves have been in development for over 12 years.

Mandated by law, the Euro standard served as an important reference for the F-24 task force. "Our goal in developing this standard was to incorporate the best input from around the world. After studying the Euro standard, we realized it represented a good framework that we could use to create elements of our standard in areas like the G-force limits," says Withers, who also represents the U.S. at CEN meetings in Europe as an unofficial member.

In a significant departure for the U.S.-based ASTM, representatives from countries like Russia, Italy, Germany, and Australia contributed to the new standard and shared information on best design practices. "The Australian standards have some excellent areas of focus with regards to operational safety, and we got a lot of good input from the Europeans on the design side," says Seay. "We also received some specific input from the Russians on G-forces. That's because many of the engineers now working in theme parks there came out of the Cosmonaut program."

Famous for being secretive, especially about an issue so sensitive as safety, Disney has assumed an unlikely leadership role in the development of standards. "Five years ago, the amusement park industry looked to organizations like Disney and Universal Studios to help them raise the bar," says Seay. "It would have been easy for these large companies to simply adopt the typical corporate attitude that there was nothing in it for them, but fortunately just the opposite occurred."

Disney literally opened its books to the ASTM organization, sharing the techniques and processes it uses to ensure that rides are designed to the highest standards. And several high-ranking engineers from Disney, including Greg Hale, Mike Withers, Emmett Peters, and Rich Langhorst, have spent hundreds of hours sharing their technical expertise with the task force. And that openness is likely to continue: For example, Disney engineers plan to take to the industry what they learn about different safety restraint systems they are currently testing. "We certainly want to help the whole industry where we can, and if we can do that by sharing information about safety issues and innovative technologies that we develop, we'll do that," says Hale.

Disney has a lot to contribute, says Dean Kamen, president of DEKA Research and developer of the Segway. "A while back, we did an impromptu, 'Let's get some of our engineers and some of your engineers together and do some benchmarking on how we go through failure mode analysis,'" recalls Kamen. "I'd have to say that we think we do a good job—we build Class 3 medical devices—but we were really impressed with how much detailed analysis that Disney does in their ride development efforts."

Who would seem to benefit the most from Disney's sharing of information are the smaller companies and mom-and-pop type parks that do not have the large engineering teams and expertise that bigger organizations bring to the table. Hale, however, stresses that everyone benefits. "What I think is important here is that we all came together in a non-competitive arena at ASTM and were able to share our best practices about things that we learned internally and to help ensure that those practices would be consistent across the industry. In the end, the goal of standards is to have everyone be able to look at them and know that if they follow them that the end product is a safe one."

"I think that the standards are more effective than anything else out there in their ability to influence good design," says Forensic Engineer Walter Laird. A specialist in amusement park ride accident investigation, Laird says that the ASTM standards are becoming better known and more widely accepted.

Not everyone, though, agrees that this community-based effort is enough. Representative Edward Markey of Massachusetts says that rides need more regulation, and has introduced a bill that would give the Consumer Products Safety Commission jurisdiction to conduct follow-up accident investigations at fixed-site amusement parks. It already does so at mobile (traveling) amusement parks.

"As well intentioned as the standards-setting people are, in the real world things happen and someone who is not beholden to the industry has to look at the information in order to make judgements and impose new safety requirements," says David Moulton, Chief of Staff for Representative Markey. "Do you think the airline industry, for example, would be safer without the NSTB? I don't think the airlines believe that it's not helpful having a vigorous safety regulator visit accident sites. In fact, the public expects it and their willingness to get on a plane the next day is that much greater."

Although the ASTM standards are voluntary and do not carry the same weight as a law, they routinely influence the regulatory environment. The standards for amusement ride design are being adopted by an ever-increasing number of states such as New Jersey, which in 2002 adopted G-force limits based on ASTM guidelines.

Many Facets of Safety

Sitting in an air-conditioned trailer on a back lot of Animal Kingdom, Hale reflected on the question of whether the new design standards will help to reduce or even eliminate amusement park ride accidents. "I think engineering standards are effective in helping to avoid design failures, but it's important to recognize that standards work hand-in-hand with good operation and maintenance practices, as well as guest education," he told me.

Non-contact stopping -- Popular in many transportation systems, block-zone safety systems are employed in roller coasters that run multiple trains on the same track. Each zone contains optical sensors that detect the presence and position of a train and brakes to stop a train in the event the previous one has not left the zone. The brakes on Disney's Rock'n'Roller Coaster consist of air-operated linear calipers that clamp onto a thin fin beneath the vehicle. When a zone is occupied, the brakes prior to the zone close. Zone lengths range from 20 to several hundred feet.

Ride operation and maintenance is a top priority at Disney. Cast members, for example, can only operate rides after undergoing attraction-specific training and have command of the ride's mechanics and operating procedures. To keep things running smoothly and avoid unplanned shutdowns, ride vehicles are routinely taken out of service for scheduled maintenance. Each night when the parks close, the maintenance team also inspects each attraction and will not authorize it for operation the next day if there are any maintenance issues that need attention. And of course, technicians and computer controls systems are monitoring ride operation con-tinuously, as I saw first-hand.

After getting a ride on the Rock 'n' Roller coaster after all, Emmett Peter took me behind the scenes to learn more about the earlier technical difficulty. Engineer Bill Whitley explained that the problem involved a one-second disagreement between two positioning sensors that make sure the ten-ton train properly engages with a linear synchronous motor-powered pusher cart. He was able to determine this by analyzing real-time data from the ride's PLCs, linear logic devices, and sensors.

Guest safety is a priority at Disney—and no wonder. According to a recent study by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, patron error accounted for approximately 76% of all amusement park ride accidents in Florida over the past three years.

In the summer of 2002, Disney rolled out a major campaign with the express purpose of building public awareness about safety. Over 10,000 new signs with safety instructions have been installed throughout the parks, and gates or fencing that cordons visitors off from active ride areas have been standardized. Hale also personally championed and wrote a section of the new standard on patron containment, which deals with fencing and guardrails.

In the end, the question is whether the industry's community-based effort to develop safety systems will be successful. How to measure success may be relatively odd, though, given that the only way to know the industry is doing a good job is when nothing happens.

Greg's Favorite Four
A lifelong lover of roller coasters, Disney's Chief of Safety Greg Hale has been known to sneak off during the day for a quick fix. Here are his top picks:
Ride	Thrill Factor	Greg's Review
Tower of Terror	Drops 123 ft at top speed of 2,680 fpm; Accelerates at a rate 12X faster than typical elevator	"Instead of a simple free-fall, it's an amazing 4,000 hp machine that provides a fantastic ride."
Rock 'n' Roller Coaster	Linear synchronous motors produce acceleration of 0 to 53 mph in less than 3 sec and includes three inversions	"The 10-ton vehicle accelerates quicker than the fastest production car; the ride has a 4G vertical acceleration at end of first loop."
Test Track	Mile-long track features a 47-deg banked turn taken at over 60 mph	"If you enjoyed playing with slot cars as a kid, this ride is a blast because you can actually ride one."
Dinosaur	Features a three-degree freedom of motion base, mounted on a moving ride vehicle with four-wheel steering	"The many axes of motion result in an amazing ride, not to mention a great way to chase dinosaurs!"