Having thought about it more; going back slightly to the seatbelt discussion, I do think seatbelts are a feasible and sensible option, if anything needs to be added additionally at all.
Yes, they may fractionally slow down throughputs and I’m slightly sceptical of how beneficial they would really be in the event of a genuine restraint failure, but they are an additional layer of redundancy beyond the phenomenally high number that are already there and with rides like Fury 325 and Orion still seemingly doing pretty well throughputs-wise even with seatbelts, I’m sceptical that the throughput effect would be that severe, even if it would be sad to see the end of some of those potentially top-tier dispatch times.
We may yet find that nothing additional needs to be added to B&M Hypers at all. It all depends on where fault is found to lie, I guess. It could be in operational procedure, it could be in maintenance of Goliath by Six Flags Over Georgia, it could be in B&M’s design, it could be a combination of all three and god knows what else. We simply don’t know, and as I said before, I am incredibly hesitant to jump to any rash conclusions or play armchair engineer or armchair judge, jury and executioner until we at very least know more about what happened.
One thing I would say, however, is that not every B&M Hyper worldwide has yet closed (to my knowledge, Shambhala and Silver Star, at very least, are still operating), which to me would suggest that B&M does not currently have reason to believe that the clamshell design itself is to blame or presents any inherent risk. Surely if B&M believed that there was even the slightest whiff of an inherent risk, the clamshells would be recalled wholesale and those rides wouldn’t be open either? Although emphasis should be placed on the word “currently” there… this is a new, fast-moving and decidedly peculiar set of circumstances (even by ride incident standards, this is a curious one), and I don’t think we can yet conclude anything.
If I were to keep an eye on anything, I would be keeping an eye on what happens with other B&M Hypers in America and around the world, and if or when some of the closed coasters reopen and in what state. That could be quite telling with regard to B&M’s findings on the inherent clamshell design.
