Ride inspection experts look forward to investigation death of a person He fell off a roller coaster in Georgia this month to see if maintenance issues, design flaws or human error contributed to the crash at Six Flags Over Georgia.
Goliath has been closed since 42 Hassan Karim Witnesses said he died after being ejected from the ride.
Georgia Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner John F. King, who is leading the investigation, said investigators will not “cut corners, jump to conclusions, or leave questions unanswered without doing everything possible to resolve them.”
“Our teams are working on site around the clock to ensure every relevant detail receives the attention it deserves,” he said in a statement last week.
“Our thoughts are with the families and loved ones affected by the tragic events in Georgia,” a spokesperson for the park said in a statement to CBS News.
“Nothing is more important to Six Flags than the safety of our guests and team members, and we remain focused on supporting the ongoing investigation by state authorities and the ride manufacturer,” the spokesperson said.
March inspection of Goliath roller coaster found No violations Kim said. The inspection report did include a note indicating that crews “need to replace the bushing” — a conundrum that experts say inspectors will certainly address.
Bushings are parts designed to reduce friction and absorb shock in various mechanical components.
Maintenance issue or design flaw?
Six Flags Has Opened Five Goliaths roller coaster exist garden Across North America for the past 25 years. The roller coaster, which opened in Georgia in 2006, can reach speeds of 70 mph on a soaring track 200 feet high. It was designed by Swiss roller coaster manufacturer Bolliger & Mabillard.
In the case of Kareem’s ejection from the ride, ride operators and coaster engineers said it could have been caused by mechanical failure, operator error (such as failure to properly check and secure restraints), or a combination of the two. Park maintenance staff should inspect the rides and their restraints every morning, they said.
“Safety is our ethos and at the heart of everything we do at Six Flags,” a park spokesman said.
“Each ride undergoes a documented safety inspection before opening each day, supported by a comprehensive maintenance program designed to meet or exceed industry safety guidelines,” the spokesperson said. “Our ride operators complete a comprehensive, multi-phase training program that includes classroom instruction, hands-on training and supervised on-the-job experience, with additional guidance and evaluation where necessary.”
When passengers board the Goliath, they are secured to the ride’s 36 seats using padded clamshell harnesses, which are U-shaped restraints that typically lock into the passenger’s thighs and waist. The ride operator will check the restraints to ensure they are locked before the ride begins.
Daniel, a self-described “big roller coaster fan” who also operates a roller coaster at another park, said the roller coaster is designed so staff can operate the ride using a control panel with various buttons and screens.
Daniel, who asked that his middle name be used because he is still employed, said the ride operator likely used two orange buttons on the control panel to turn the car’s restraints on and off. When the sensor detects that each restraint is closed, the two green mushroom buttons at the bottom begin to flash. He said this meant operators could push them to schedule trips.
Goliath inspection records obtained by CBS News and dating back more than a decade show 20 violations that were quickly resolved between 2016 and 2021 and have not occurred since.
However, Troy Richardson, an engineer with experience building and inspecting roller coasters, said records about the bushings from the March inspection could be important.
Bushings are used to secure mechanical components in restraints, chassis joints, and wheel trucks so that they are positioned correctly during the repeated friction and bumps of a roller coaster.
Even a small defect in the casing can become a big problem, said Richardson, founder and CEO of MIT Experts, a firm that provides forensic consulting in amusement park litigation.
“A bushing, if it’s a little bit off, now the pin won’t go into the hole, or it’ll be a little loose in the hole,” he said.
Richardson added that the manufacturer of the roller coaster A maintenance and replacement schedule for each component will most likely be listed in the operator’s manual. Richardson said a key question investigators will ask is whether staff followed those instructions.
A person familiar with park operations said the bushings discovered during the March inspection were on the ride’s bogie assembly, which connects the vehicle to the track, and had nothing to do with the restraint system. The person said they had made the changes as recommended.
Another expert, Catherine Woodcock, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Themed Experiences and Attractions Research, said investigators wanted to know “what exactly was not going as expected.”
“If two parts disconnect (e.g., a latch comes loose), that’s a different situation than if one part breaks (e.g., a crack fails catastrophically),” Woodcock said.
Woodcock described the tricky process behind determining when to replace a part.
“Replacing parts too early is not necessarily better,” Woodcock, a professor at City University of Toronto, wrote in an email.
She said the likelihood of a roller coaster part failing typically falls along a “‘bathtub curve,’ where failure is most common at the beginning of use due to possible manufacturing defects, and then if failure does not occur, there is a period of very low likelihood of failure – depending on its material, shape and load – when the likelihood of failure increases again.”
“Responsible for some very important systems”
Six Flags operates nearly three dozen parks in North America and will have more than 47 million guests and 95,000 employees by 2025, according to SEC filings.
The 2022 death of 22-year-old Christopher Hawley after riding the X2 roller coaster at Six Flags Magic Mountain in California raised questions about ride maintenance and inspections, said attorney Timothy Loranger, who represents Hawley’s family.
AP Photo/Jae C. Hong 
“What I did see in talking to the people who maintained the rides was that I didn’t come out of the conversation feeling confident that they were doing their jobs and I felt like they didn’t have the proper training,” Loranger said. “They were responsible for some very important systems but maybe didn’t really understand what they were doing.”
Six Flags Magic Mountain reaches settlement with Holly’s family in wrongful death lawsuit. The park permanently closed X2 in September litigation Passengers are said to have suffered a piling up of brain injuries. (The Doan Law Firm, which tracks published theme park-related deaths, lists two previous Goliath deaths in its database: a 2002 brain aneurysm death at Six Flags Magic Mountain in California and a 2006 Goliath death at Six Flags in Georgia that was listed as a possible heart attack.)
Loranger said he wouldn’t be surprised if the same challenges he saw at Magic Mountain showed up at Six Flags Over Georgia.
David Borrell/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images 
Ride operators at Six Flags Over Georgia spoke to CBS News about the training and management they receive in their mission to keep thrill-seekers safe.
Jacobi Edwards, 18, who worked as a ride operations supervisor at Six Flags Over Georgia for several months last spring, described it as “a well-run place” and said he was proud of his work there. But he chose other roller coaster jobs, in part because of Goliath’s popularity.
“They have a rush because this is the most famous ride in the park, so they do feel rushed,” said Edwards, 17, who works at the park.
He said that when he was on duty, his priority was the safety of his guests rather than trying to “get more bikes.”
Richardson, the MIT engineer, said park directors need to trust that park staff are “ambassadors … who are working to keep people safe and be your front line.”
“I don’t care if there are 100 people in line, we don’t want people to die, you know? They need to have the ability to come in and say, ‘Hey, I have the authority to shut it down if I think it’s unsafe,'” Richardson said.
“Our team members receive extensive training to safely operate and maintain our rides,” Six Flags Over Georgia President Richard Pretlow said in a statement after the incident.
But Harper Henderson, 18, is a former employee who started working at Six Flags Over Georgia when she was 15. She said that amid the pressure to keep Goliath queues flowing, there was also an urgent need to train new employees on roller coaster operations.
Like Edwards, Henderson said she was promoted to instructor at age 17, after working as a ride operator for six weeks.
“Whenever we have new employees, I walk them through the operating procedures for all the rides and then watch them pretend to be operating the rides or pretending to help with restraints or other things,” she said. “I would do this over and over again until I thought they were ready to be tested, and then I would send them out for the test.”
She describes it as a process that “can be completed in about an hour.” Henderson said it takes at least an hour for ride operators to review all training.
CBS News reviewed operator testing of two rides at Six Flags Over Georgia: the Georgia Scorcher and the Log Jamboree. The questions, on a Microsoft Forms form, asked about the mechanics of each ride and its safety procedures. For example, in the Georgia Scorcher quiz, operators are asked: “What does it mean when the DISPATCH button on the primary operator flashes?”
Henderson said the rides are often so busy that she has to rush training.
“We’ll just give them the test answers,” Henderson said, adding that new operators would be ready to work in “15 minutes.”
Henderson said she was unhappy with the process. She said she would resign in July 2025.
“Actually, you can skip it, which is not great,” she said. “That’s because management is really trying to keep each ride open with the minimum number of people.”