[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 77 (Thursday, May 22, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1060-E1061]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    INTRODUCING THE NATIONAL AMUSEMENT PARK RIDE SAFETY ACT OF 2003

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. EDWARD J. MARKEY

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 22, 2003

  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, Memorial Day is the beginning of the season 
when American families take their children to our amusement parks for a 
day of fun and sun. Unfortunately, it is also the case that over 75 
percent of the serious injuries suffered on these rides occur between 
the months of May and September. Most of America thinks that the rides 
at these parks are subject to oversight by the nation's top consumer 
safety watchdog--the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC.). But 
this is not true. The industry used to be subject to federal safety 
regulation, but in 1981 it succeeded in carving out a special-interest 
political exemption in the law--the so-called Roller Coaster Loophole.
  It is time to put the safety of our children first--it is time to 
close the Roller Coaster Loophole.
  Today I am introducing the NATIONAL AMUSEMENT PARK RIDE SAFETY ACT, 
to restore safety oversight to a largely unregulated industry. I am 
joined in this effort by Representatives George Miller, Bill Pascrell, 
Barney Frank, Frank Pallone, Richard Neal, Jan Schakowsky, Jim 
McGovern, Carolyn Maloney and John Tierney.


                          support for the bill

  We are supported in this endeavor by the nation's leading consumer-
protection advocates, including Consumer's Union, the Consumer 
Federation of America, the National SAFE KIDS Campaign, Saferparks.org, 
and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.
  Moreover, the nation's pediatricians--the doctors who treat the 
injuries suffered by children on amusement park rides--have endorsed 
our bill. According the American Academy of Pediatrics, ``a first step 
to prevention of these injuries is adopting stronger safety regulations 
that allow for better inspection and oversight of the fixed-rides.''


                 the problem with state-only regulation

  ``Fixed'' or ``fixed-site'' rides are found predominantly in 
destination theme parks. When an accident occurs on such rides, the law 
actually prevents the CPSC from even setting foot in the park to find 
out what happened. In some states, an investigation may occur, but in 
many, there is literally no regulatory oversight at all. And no matter 
how diligent a particular state might be, there is no substitute for 
federal oversight of an industry where park visitors often come from 
out-of-state; a single manufacturer will sell versions of the same ride 
to park operators in many different states; no state has the 
jurisdiction, resources or mission to ensure that the safety lessons 
learned within its borders are shared systematically with every other 
state.


                    rides can kill, not just thrill

  Although the overall risk of death on an amusement park ride is very 
small, it is not zero. Fifty-five fatalities have occurred on amusement 
park rides in the last 15 years, and over two-thirds occur on ``fixed-
site'' rides in our theme parks. In August 1999, 4 deaths occurred on 
roller coasters in just one week, ``one of the most calamitous weeks in 
the history of America's amusement parks,'' according to U.S. News and 
World Report:
  August 22--a 12-year-old boy fell to his death after slipping through 
a harness on the Drop Zone ride at Paramount's Great America Theme Park 
in Santa Clara, California;
  August 23--a 20-year-old man died on the Shockwave roller coaster at 
Paramount King's Dominion theme park near Richmond, Virginia;
  August 28--a 39-year-old woman and her 8-year-old daughter were 
killed when their car slid backward down a 30-foot ascent and crashed 
into another car, injuring two others on the Wild Wonder roller coaster 
at Gillian's Wonderland Pier in Ocean City, New Jersey.)
  Since that week, there have been six more fatalities on amusement 
park rides, including an 11-year-old girl just over two weeks ago at 
Six Flags Great America in Gurnee, Illinois.
  Every one of these is an unspeakable horror for the families. It is 
simply inexcusable that when a loved one dies or is seriously injured 
on these rides, there is no system in place to ensure that the ride is 
investigated, the causes determined, and the flaws fixed, not just on 
that ride, but on every similar ride in every other state. The reason 
this system does not exist is the Roller Coaster Loophole.
  Every other consumer product affecting interstate commerce--a bicycle 
or a baby carriage, for example--endures CPSC oversight. But the theme 
park industry acts as if its commercial success depends on remaining 
exempt from CPSC oversight. As a result, when a child is injured on a 
defective bicycle, the CPSC can prevent similar accidents by ensuring 
that the defect is repaired. If that same child has an accident on a 
faulty roller coaster, no CPSC investigation is allowed. That's just 
plain wrong.


    fatalities per mile compared to trains, planes, buses and autos

  The industry attempts to justify their special-interest exemption by 
pretending that there is no risk in riding machines that carry human 
beings 70, 80 or 90 miles an hour. The rides are very short, and most 
people are not injured. But in fact, the number of fatalities per 
passenger mile on roller coasters is higher than on passenger trains, 
passenger buses, and passenger planes. The National Safety Council uses 
a standard method of comparing risk of injury per distance traveled. As 
can be seen from the following table, riding on a roller coaster is 
generally safer than driving a car, but is not generally safer than 
riding a passenger bus, train or airplane:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                             Fatalities               Fatalities
                                                                ------------------------------------ per 100 mil
                                                                   1997     1998     1999     2000      miles
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Automobiles....................................................   21,920   21,099   20,763   20,444         0.86
Roller Coasters................................................        3        4        6        1         0.70
Railroad Passenger Trains......................................        6        4       14        4         0.05
Scheduled Airlines.............................................       42        1       17       87         0.01
Buses..........................................................        4       26       39        3         0.04
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Fatalities are just the tip of problem, however. Broken bones, 
gashes, and other serious injuries have been rising much faster than 
attendance. Neither the CPSC is prohibited from requiring the 
submission of injury data directly from ride operators, so it is forced 
to fall back on an indirect method, the National Electronic Injury 
Surveillance System (NEISS), which gathers information from a 
statistical sample of hospital emergency rooms and then estimates 
national numbers. Nevertheless,

[[Page E1061]]

NEISS has been gathering these statistics systematically over many 
years, so that trends become clear over time.


                   soaring injury rates in our parks

  Beginning in 1996, a sharp upward trend can be seen in hospital 
emergency room visits by passengers on ``fixed'' rides--the category of 
rides exempt from CPSC regulation under the Roller Coaster Loophole. 
These injuries soared 96 percent over the next five years. Meanwhile, 
such emergency room visits were falling for passengers on rides that 
the CPSC still regulates.
  Here are the year-by-year estimates of non-occupational amusement 
ride injuries, 1996-2001, from the CPSC:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                            Fixed             Mobile
                Year                  (``unregulated'')  (``regulated'')
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1996................................              3419              2963
1997................................              5353              2562
1998................................              6523              2751
1999................................              7629              2788
2000................................              6595              3985
2001................................              6704              1609
------------------------------------------------------------------------

  The theme park industry likes to tell the public that its rides are 
safer than the mobile rides because they are overseen by a permanent 
park staff, but according to this independent government safety agency 
report, the mobile parks have less of an injury problem than the theme 
parks.
  Why has this startling increase in amusement park rides occurred 
recently? No one knows for sure. If the facts were known to the CPSC, 
it could do its job. But the facts are kept from the CPSC, so we are 
left to speculate.
  We know, for example, that new steel technology and the roller 
coaster building boom of the 1990s resulted in an increase in the speed 
almost as dramatic as the increase in serious injuries. All of the 
nation's 15 fastest coasters have been built in the last 10 years.
  In 1980, the top speed hit 60 mph. In 1990, it hit 70 mph. The top 
speed today is 120 mph.
  For the most part, these rides are designed, operated and ridden 
safely. But clearly, the margin for error is much narrower for a child 
on a ride traveling at 100 mph than on a ride traveling 50 mph. 
Children often do foolish things, and the operators themselves are 
often teenagers. People make mistakes. The design of these rides must 
anticipate that their patrons will act like children, because they 
often are children.


          the bill restores basic safety oversight to the cpsc

  The bill we are introducing today will close the special-interest 
loophole that prevents effective federal safety oversight of amusement 
park rides. It would, therefore, restore to the CPSC the standard 
safety jurisdiction over ``fixed-site'' amusement park rides that it 
used to have before the Roller Coaster Loophole was adopted. There 
would no longer be an artificial and unjustifiable split between 
unregulated ``fixed-site'' rides and regulated ``mobile'' rides. When a 
family traveled to a park anywhere in the United States, a mother or 
father would know that their children were being placed on a ride that 
was subject to basic safety regulations by the CPSC.
  It would restore CPSC's authority to:
  1. Investigate accidents,
  2. Develop an enforce action plans to correct defects, and
  3. Act as a national clearinghouse for accident and defect data.
  The bill would also authorize appropriations of $500 thousand 
annually to enable the CPSC to carry out the purposes of the Act.
  I urge my colleagues to join us in this effort to make this the 
safest summer ever in our theme parks. Let's pass the National 
Amusement Park Ride Safety Act.

                          ____________________