This is a bizarre and tragic accident by any measure, and I’m still quite perplexed as to what to perceive.
We of course should rule nothing out at this stage, and I’m very reluctant to come to any hard conclusions before we hear more. I’m not keen on concluding anything based purely on “the angle of the restraint in the ORP” (various things can make photos mislead on matters like this) or eyewitness accounts (which, while undeniably well-intended, are not always the most reliable, particularly when concerning the highly traumatic and fast-moving sight of a man being ejected from a roller coaster). I will leave the empirical conclusions to the inevitable criminal investigation.
With that said, I do think an interesting thing to note is that with of all the incidents of this nature I can think of that have happened in recent memory, the cause has been some mitigating factor not related to the actual mechanics themselves failing. The Orlando drop tower death was found to be a result of the park operator tampering with sensors to allow riders larger than manufacturer recommended limits to ride, the New Texas Giant death was a larger rider who was by the sounds of things too large to properly fit in the restraint, the Ride of Steel death was a man with no legs who shouldn’t really have been allowed to ride (if I recall), the Drenched death was Oakwood not properly checking that restraints had been sufficiently closed, non-fatal accidents like the Smiler crash were also caused by human error… I’m struggling to think of the last time that a restraint genuinely catastrophically failed on a roller coaster, or any ride for that matter. I particularly think this given that we’re talking about B&M, a manufacturer who have never had an accident of this nature on one of their rides and are widely known for an exemplary safety record. B&M Hyper Coasters have been operating with these restraints for 27 years; if there is some major intrinsic issue with the design, isn’t it unusual that it hasn’t already reared its head by now?
In terms of where we go from here, I think that will vary depending on what the cause is eventually found to be. It may simply be changes in procedure, or changes in the types of body dimensions allowed to ride B&M Hypers, or it may be something more sweeping. I’m wondering whether we may see B&M Hypers widely fitted with seatbelts. Or worse, see them reverting to the RMC-style procedure of having to do up the seatbelt, have that checked by the op and then have the op lower the bar for you afterwards. That would kill the throughput of a model known for its throughput, but I wonder if people may not trust the sole lap bar on its own. I’m always sceptical that seatbelts in the way they are implemented on B&M Hypers (looser ones across your lap like those on a woodie, if I’m not wrong, rather than ones that actually hook onto the restraint like those on B&M’s OTSRs) would do an awful lot in the event of a genuine restraint failure, but sometimes, I think safety theatre (perception of safety) is almost as important as actual safety in gaining public trust.
But I'm trying not to speculate too much, I also have a couple of possible theories I haven't seen mentioned yet, but I really don't want to go down the route of speculating too much...
