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One ride failed, nine were shut — the radius was drawn by the company
Just before four on Monday afternoon, a man fell from the Goliath roller coaster at Six Flags Over Georgia and died. Four other riders were hurt. Guests still out on the track had to be walked down.
By Tuesday the company had closed nine other coasters, at six parks across the United States and Canada. None of them had failed. What they share is a shape — tall steel machines, almost all of them from the same Swiss builder. Rides in New Jersey, Illinois, Ohio, North Carolina, California and Ontario went dark because of one train in Georgia.
No regulator asked for that. Congress took fixed-site amusement rides out of the Consumer Product Safety Commission's hands in 1981, and inspection has belonged to the states ever since. Georgia's investigation had barely started. The list of nine was Six Flags' own.
The list is what the market read. The stock hit a fifty-two-week low on Tuesday. Nobody was pricing an accident report, because there isn't one yet. They were pricing the radius the operator drew around itself. Close nine rides and you have said out loud that you cannot clear the ninth.
Most of the board this week is bank tickers, with earnings season open. Six Flags got up there without filing anything.
Where you are, when something like this happens, who stops the machines first — the operator, or the inspector?
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