Large Florida theme parks submit a recap of serious injuries to the state regulator on a quarterly basis. The reports are available to the public online, as the Exempt Facilities Report from the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Reports are disclosed through the news media and receive varying coverage in each period. The reports are appended to the top of that link on a quarterly basis, and can be viewed back to the 4th quarter of 2000.
The reports are submitted as part of the agreement that the so-called “exempt facilities”, defined as amusement facilities that employ over 1,000 people and have full-time inspectors. In a carnival setting or small regional park, not only are staffing levels a small fraction of a theme park staff roster, but repair and inspection and operation are closely integrated. In a large theme park, the ride manufacturer is usually one or more external businesses, whose work is closely inspected by the park before accepting the equipment. As part of installation and commissioning, the park will test the equipment exhaustively, to ensure that the manufacturer has delivered what the contract has specified, and has made good any deficiencies. Extensive safety testing is part of this commissioning process. Once accepted, the park staff take responsibility for the sustaining engineering work of maintenance and inspection, and attraction operations operates the equipment for guests. These independent units reside under one corporate umbrella that could be motivated to keep concerns private, but the Florida agreement that serious injuries are publicly reported serves as motivation to deal with the concerns, and not dismiss them. The Florida agreement is also practical, in that the parks have more knowledge about the unique technologies of major theme parks than the state regulator could have, and more resources.
The concern is not as much that safety would be ignored as it is that little information is available to outsiders. This is not much different from jurisdictions that do have regulatory inspection and more extensive reporting obligations: while the operator provides more information to the state, the public usually sees little of it.
As such, the Florida quarterly reports contain more information about cases, more promptly, than most jurisdictions, but the information is scant.
Many of the injury types are described as “pain”. This makes it difficult to differentiate whether a guest has fractured or even amputated a limb, or simply lacerated, abraded, or contused a body part. This is often read as a lack of transparency on the part of operators.
That said, many of the reported conditions seen from one quarter to the next could describe guests unfit to spend an active day in Florida sun and heat, potentially with insufficient hydration or rest during the day. Excitement and peer pressure pushes guests onward until their body refuses to continue. Sitting on a ride for a few minutes may be the first opportunity to sit down and enjoy shade and cool and become mindful of how poorly they feel. Seeking aid from the park’s medical services at that point, they are referred out of an abundance of caution, and are recorded as a “serious” injury.
On the other hand, it is possible that “pain” results from an operational breakdown, such as being caught between a ride vehicle and platform or in a gate, and a “headache” could have occurred as a result of an impact against a surface on or around the ride, but the terminology used in quarterly reports does not document the nature of the injury event, just the type of injury. An improved injury taxonomy would go a long way to making these reports meaningful.