News – Page 16 – Kathryn Woodcock, PhD CCPE ICAE PEng

Five amusement tips for kids: how not to have a bad day

TORONTO, June 26, 2012 – As the Canada Day long weekend approaches, many families may be thinking about heading to an amusement park or summer festival for a fun day riding stomach-dropping roller coasters, Ferris wheels and spinning swings. Rides can be thrilling, and even a little scary, but most of the sensation of danger is a clever illusion, says Kathryn Woodcock, an amusement ride expert at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Safety first for amusement rides: tips for parents

Behaviour malfunction

a child is seen diving headfirst into an inflatable amusement device below label saying "no diving, enter feet first"

Are we on the right page when we are trying to prevent misuse in the public / consumer environment?

Statistics consistently show that amusement ride injury investigators identify human behaviour as antecedents to failure, including the omission of actions that were required, actions performed which should not have been, and actions that were not performed with sufficient speed and accuracy.

Engineering, the obligation

The Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer is a moving experience. I keep the framed Obligation on my office wall immediately over my shoulder. Initiated by Prof. Haultain and written by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), the ritual was first performed in 1925 to remind graduating engineers about critical ethical principles in the practice of their calling of engineering. The cost of engineering failure may be significant harm to others, and there is no room for compromise on good workmanship.

Scary-safe rides

One of the most common questions I receive both in small-talk conversations and media interviews (such as _this one_), is how rides can be scary and safe at the same time. A student asserted to me just the other day that rides were “notoriously dangerous”. This is actually quite inaccurate.

Amusement ride safety: who “does” it?

Several people stand inside a covered amusement ride discussing what they are looking at, as patrons stand outside hoping to ride,

There is considerable diversity from jurisdiction to jurisdiction about portable carnival ride inspection. However no rides go uninspected.

Accessible theme parks

Walt Disney quote: delight all members of the family

I just finished reading “Theme Park Design: Behind the scenes with an engineer” by Steve Alcorn. I picked it up at the Bookstore during the IAAPA Expo in Orlando last month and took advantage of the flight home to read quite a lot of the way through. The book describes in a very realistic way how talented people make plans–and adapt to reality–using examples from his own career in show engineering with a number of theme parks, as employee and as contracted consultant, including many examples from his role in the organization now known as Walt Disney Imagineering and particularly the construction and launch of Disney’s second Florida park: Epcot. The book clearly differentiates the many specializations required to conceive, design, plan, build, test, and operate an amusement attraction.

In the queue

bees on a wire, like the toys in dentists' waiting room

Any service involves queueing, whether it is a doctor’s office or public transit. The queue is the area where you wait for service. Sometimes you are literally in a line and other times you are more of a herd, and sometimes you’re lucky enough to arrive at the point of service to find no one waiting (instabus!) but queueing is a fact of life. Waiting to ride an amusement ride typically involves a queue, and this becomes sort of the folklore or fiction of the activity.

Fellow me

I would like to thank the Academy, er, the Executive Council of the Association of Canadian Ergonomists for designating me a Fellow of the Association at the 2011 Annual Meeting.

ACE member logo

Factors in subjective workload in sign language interpretation

Johnson, R., Woodcock, K., Abdoli-E., M., 2011. Factors in subjective workload in sign language interpretation. Proceedings of the Association of Canadian Ergonomists, London ON, 18-20 October, 6 pgs.