A roller coaster is said to make you smile… But some people definitely weren’t smiling.
What is The Smiler?
The Smiler is a roller coaster at Alton Towers which is located in Staffordshire, United Kingdom, built on May 31, 2013. The Smiler is the first ever roller coaster with 14 inversions and they hold the world record for most inversions.
June 2nd, 2015
You might be asking yourself, “ Why is that day so special? “ Or something of those sorts. Well on June 2, 2015, a crash occurred on The Smiler. This wasn’t any little crash. This crash would harm Alton Towers Reputation forever.
What actually was the crash?
The Smiler always had such a long line and June 2nd wasn’t any different. I won’t be naming anyone but if you wish to know more about the victims. Google is your best friend. I will touch on the people who were injured the most by the crash. It was two couples in the front row, the two girls in the middle and the boys on the edge. Enough about the people let’s get to the crash. For some context, there were three carts at the station and one ready to load people. For a random reason the staff said “ Yup let’s send out a fifth cart!” and so they did. A reminder that The Smiler was running in winds that it most definitely shouldn’t have run in. Due to the wind and well it’s an empty cart with no weight, the cart failed to finish an inversion and it valleyed. The cart was now stationary and the staff didn’t think to have the test cart make it back to the station before sending out people. They loaded a cart full of people and sent it out even though that empty test cart was still there. Now something that had happened is called “zone blocking” where if a cart tries to get onto a chunk of track where another cart is, the cart will stop. There are times when this happens but there isn’t another cart, this is considered a “ghost train”. This happened with the people on the cart, so they sent out an engineer but decided, “ Let’s not tell him there is a fifth cart.” the engineer thought there were only four carts. The engineer saw the three at the station and then the one with people on it, so they thought it was a ghost train. The staff overrode the zone blocking. Boom, the cart with people ran straight into the test cart.
Here you can see the two carts running into each other, one filled with 16 people running into the empty cart at 53 mph. The thing is it didn’t hit once, it hit multiple times going back and forth until both carts collided and stopped moving after a few minutes. There is a hook at the front of every coaster cart to move the cart, and well the two girls in the middle had to get their legs amputated whichever one was closest to the hook.
There fortunately were no deaths and it was mainly the front row with severe injuries and the rest of the rows with serious whiplash. But this is still at an amusement park, so everyone there saw this happen. People pulled out their phones to take videos and photos, not to call the ambulance. The people in the front row were screaming in pain and agony. The ambulance got there after a few minutes, helping the riders get out and rushed to the hospital.
What had caused the crash?
The crash, like most roller coaster crashes was human error. Roller coasters are designed to be safe and usually crashes on roller coasters are from a human error. There are times when the crash is a derailment. Derailments are when the wheels on a train get off the track. Even then, sometimes human error leads to derailment but usually, the main cause is broken rails. A wooden roller coaster, El Toro, had derailed on June 29, 2021, for repairs. A train partially derailed after the rear car’s up-stop wheels—which sit underneath the train and below the track—moved out of place to the top of the track. Roller coasters are designed to be safe! They wouldn’t be open if they weren’t, crashes just like The Smiler are mostly human error. Not even kidding you have a higher chance of dying in a car accident which is 1 in 93 versus dying in a roller coaster is 1 in 170 million. That’s crazy! Car crashes aren’t even in the thousands and roller coaster is in the millions!
Well if you couldn’t tell, I absolutely love roller coasters. Roller coasters are SO safe and if you’re scared then it’s time to get over your fear! If you have something to say or want to say something about the crash or another roller coaster crash, say it down below! Either way, I hope you enjoyed learning about this crazy roller coaster crash!
