Guess the fine

[Kwacky]

Alton Towers are in court today for sentencing for the crash last year which left a number of people injured, including 2 amputations.

Their turn over is £500m as a group (They're part of the Merlin Entertainment group)

I'm going for £15m

[D41]

I'll say 50M...which will be reduced on appeal to roughly 33-50% of the original figure.

[Monty]

Somewhere between 16.5M and 25M

[D41]

LOLOL!!

[duke63]

£12 million.

[Kwacky]

£5M

That's low. I know the barrister defending them and he is excellent at his job. Guess he's earned his money on that case.

[C00kiemonster]

I think they will be very happy with that.

I have to say from what i heard they have been very good with the victims?

[Kwacky]

Insurance companies tend to move pretty quick in providing rehab and support in these type of injury cases. Interim payments will have been made pretty early on and they would have paid for initial needs assessments, therapy and support.

[D41]

What was the cause of the incident??

[Kwacky]

One of the operators over rode a safety warning telling him there was a carriage on that part of the track

[Blade]

Don't really know much on the case tbh.

Reading the comment above. Kwacky if a individual personally choose to over ride a safety feature has he been penalised in anyway ?

I imagine as the company has been prosecuted it's on the basis that the company failed to provide adequate procedures for their operators to comply / follow when overriding safety features and they had a poor safety culture but that's an assumption.

[Kwacky]

I don't know what's happened internally. He might still have his job as the company were heavily criticised for a lack of training.

Overall the safety culture is good at Alton Towers. I think this is their first prosecution and they've been running for about 30 years.

From the BBC Site:-

How events unfolded

•When the park opened on 2 June 2015 four trains were operating on The Smiler; a fifth was stored away

•At 13:00 BST one of the trains developed a problem; technical staff were called

•An engineer thought it was a good opportunity to maximise the capacity for riders with the fifth train because the park was busy

•An empty test train was sent but failed

•Engineers pushed the train until it engaged with the system and it went off

•Another empty train was sent out. It got stuck, too, but in a different place

•Engineers were unaware of this, thought everything was working fine and handed the rider back over to operators

•The train with 16 passengers on was sent out and stopped

•The engineers looked but could not see the stalled car, thought the computer was wrong, and over-rode the stop. This set the 16-passenger train in motion and into the empty carriage

[C00kiemonster]

I don't know what's happened internally. He might still have his job as the company were heavily criticised for a lack of training.

Overall the safety culture is good at Alton Towers. I think this is their first prosecution and they've been running for about 30 years.

From the BBC Site:-

How events unfolded

•When the park opened on 2 June 2015 four trains were operating on The Smiler; a fifth was stored away

•At 13:00 BST one of the trains developed a problem; technical staff were called

•An engineer thought it was a good opportunity to maximise the capacity for riders with the fifth train because the park was busy

•An empty test train was sent but failed

•Engineers pushed the train until it engaged with the system and it went off

•Another empty train was sent out. It got stuck, too, but in a different place

•Engineers were unaware of this, thought everything was working fine and handed the rider back over to operators

•The train with 16 passengers on was sent out and stopped

•The engineers looked but could not see the stalled car, thought the computer was wrong, and over-rode the stop. This set the 16-passenger train in motion and into the empty carriage

Not good reading, but i do find it fascinating how events conspire to make something happen that shouldnt. For me it's the override that shouldnt have been possible without more than once person enabling it.

All easy to say in hindsight, but accidents are avoidable but do always happen at some point.

[Blade]

I have to apply overrides on safety systems at work Cookie. Even the most basic level of overide (they are all ranked) needs risk assessing by a competent site Controller (or team depending on level), than the risk assessment and approval to override must be granted by a supervisor, then a competent person who is applying the override has to sign to say they applied it (they are accountable). Therefore a minimum of 3 competent people are involved for the most basic of overide. When the overide is removed the date and time is logged. Depending on the level of protecton to be overidden and the duration of such overide, different controls are put in place. All of this is recorded both electronically and with a hard copy which is archived. The whole process is subject to audit fortnightly by a Technical Custodian who again signs or raises actions accordingly. There is then a 6 monthly audit carried out by a 3rd party auditor and random checks by the HSE as they deem fit. The system is simple, auditable and robust for it to fail imo it would most likely be predictable through the many and frequent audit findings.

Of course it is open to abuse as any system is but if procedures are followed there are checks and measures to ensure integrity.

If a similar system was in place at Alton Towers which I would like to assume it was, then I would GUESS shortcuts were taken by personal and procedures NOT adhered too by staff or controlled by management.

Nothing factual just my assumptions.

[Kwacky]

A couple of the engineers at Alton Towers allege that they hadn't seen the manual for the ride. If that's true then any heads to roll must be further up the management chain

[kiwikrasher]

To summarise Blades explaination, we are very similar at my work. Any override requires mitigation. You can't just take out a safety barrier and not mitigate the increased risk. Simple bow tie theory of risk control.

I have no knowledge of the incident apart from what I read here, but to override a safety device on an assumption in my view is negligent. How far up the chain that negligence is accountable for is the real issue I'd say.

[duke63]

It's astonishing that engineers sent to remedy a fault did not do a proper check on what carriages were out on the track already.

[Blade]

It's more astonishing imo that they had an automated warning of a vehicle still on track and causing a potential hazard and just disregarded it or at best made minimal checks.

It would seem they had foresight and choose to ignore it.

[D41]

Things of this nature are almost ALWAYS down to human error at some level. Machines don't make mistakes...it's that simple. I'm frankly surprised that this sort of thing doesn't happen more often.

People want to do something that is inherently dangerous at some level or other, then are surprised when there are negative consequences. Doesn't figure.