
Schlitterbahn’s Tragic Slide - TobiasA
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/jeff-henry-verruckt-schlitterbahns-tragic-slide/
======
donarb
The really tragic thing is that the father of the killed 10 year old was a
Kansas legislator who voted for a cap on damages (max $300K) when someone is
killed due to negligence. A quirk in Kansas law allows for Kansans injured by
out-of-state parties to apply the laws of the state where the other party is
located. So Scott Schwab parlayed the payout for his son's death from $300,000
to $20 million, all while denying the same to his constituents injured by
Kansas companies.

[https://www.injuryrelief.com/blog/how-is-representative-
scot...](https://www.injuryrelief.com/blog/how-is-representative-scott-schwab-
not-a-hypocrite/)

~~~
tzs
Any of his constituents injured by out of state parties can do exactly the
same thing he did. Any injury he suffers at the hands of a Kansas company will
be subject to the same damage limits that such injuries suffered by his
constituents are.

I don't see how this is either hypocrisy (as alleged in the article you link
to) or denying his constituents some benefit that is allowed to him (as you
claim).

I am curious _why_ Kansas law allows in the case of an out-of-state tortfeasor
applying the laws of the tortfeasor's state for damage limits. (I assume that
it is still Kansas law determines whether or not a tort was committed?)

If the tort _occurred_ in another state, and the Kansas victim elected to sue
in Kansas, then I believe that normal choice of law rules would have the
Kansas court apply the laws of the state where the tort occurred, both for
determining whether there is liability, and determining the damages (Kansas
law, though, for rules of procedure and rules of evidence).

But here the tort occurred in Kansas, so I'm confused. The only theory that
comes to mind is that this is meant to make Kansas more attractive as a home
state to companies.

For instance, suppose you are going to set up a company that primarily serves
customers in Kansas and Texas. If you make Texas your home, you will be
subject to Texas damage limits on your torts in Texas against Texans, and
because of the Kansas tort quirk you will also be subject to Texas damage
limits on your torts against Kansans in Kansas.

If, on the other hand, you make Kansas your home, you will will be subject to
Texas damages on your torts against Texans in Texas, but on your torts against
Kansans in Kansas the damages will be limited by the $300k Kansas limit on
Kansas companies.

If this is the reason, I wonder if it could be challenged on interstate
commerce grounds? Making the damage limit on torts committed in Kansas lower
for Kansas companies than for companies in states with higher damage limits
advantages Kansas businesses.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
> I don't see how this is either hypocrisy

Seriously, you don't? It's all "over burdensome regulation" and "tort lawyers
looking for a huge payday" until it's YOUR child that is hurt or killed.
Legislator is damn lucky the tortfeasor was from out of state.

~~~
tzs
> Seriously, you don't?

No, I don't. The definition of hypocrisy is "the practice of claiming to have
moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform".

He voted for a law that resulted in reduced damages for torts committed in
Kansas by Kansas companies but did not reduce damages for torts committed in
Kansas by non-Kansas companies, at least in some circumstances [1].

This suggests that his moral standards or beliefs at the time he voted for the
law were that out-of-state companies should be subject to higher damages than
Kansas companies [2]. (That's a crappy moral standard and belief, but that's
not relevant from a hypocrisy perspective).

He later was a plaintiff in a tort case against a non-Kansas company, and
asked for higher damages than he would be able to get from a Kansas company.
This is not acting in a way that does not conform to moral standards or
beliefs that his vote suggests he holds.

The essence of hypocrisy is telling everyone to act one way and then acting in
a different way yourself. Here he is acting in the same way the law he voted
for allows all Kansans to act, so we cannot infer hypocrisy.

That doesn't mean he should not be criticized strongly. The law he voted for
is very bad on two counts. First, by severely limiting damages on torts
committed by Kansas companies, it harms those company's Kansas victims.

Second, by having different limits depending on whether it is a Kansas company
or not, it means that different Kansas plaintiffs who suffer similar injuries
from a tortfeasor in Kansas can face vastly different damage limits depending
on where the tortfeasor happens to be incorporated. That's fundamentally
unfair.

[1] The injury lawyer blog that was cited just says there is "apparently" a
"quirk" in Kansas law, and the cite is just a newspaper article that just says
it may have something to do with choice of law, so it is not clear exactly how
this thing came about.

[2] I'm assuming that there is some basic competence on the part of the Kansas
legislature and their staff that actually prepare legislation, so that when
they decided to lower damage limits on torts they knew about this mysterious
quirk and knew that they were writing their legislation in a way that would
not eliminate it.

------
rossdavidh
I think this article makes too much of the fact that they were not engineers
(I say this as a person with two engineering degrees), and too little of the
fact that this was by far not the first indication of problems. I can't find
the HN link now, but the official government report was pretty damning. There
were numerous incidents that lead to injuries, numerous reports that rafts had
gone airborne when they shouldn't have, numerous times when employees
expressed reservations or misgivings about this ride. It doesn't take an
engineering degree, or any degree, to respond to what you see happening. This
accident didn't come out of nowhere, and they had many previous indications
that there was a problem.

~~~
Gibbon1
I believe one of the reason we have professional engineering licenses which
require years of working under a PE is because an engineering degree is simply
not enough to weed out the loons and incompetents.

I worked for 10 years for a industrial controls company and I have a wildly
more conservative attitude towards safety than most of the engineers,
especially CS people I know. Far as I can tell this doesn't correlate to a
having an accredited degree at all.

------
AdamM12
From KC. The indictment [1][2] is pretty bad. There were multiple reported
injuries that were decently severe leading up to the final incident. One of
the guys full blown destroyed reports. Which led some 17 yo kid to become a
whistle blower and go to detectives. I'll agree this article attempts to paint
this guys a slightly more favorable light and should of went more in depth
into the actual misconduct of some of the persons involved. KC Star did some
really good reporting on this whole incident even leading up to it I believe
they were calling into question the safety.

[1] [https://www.kansascity.com/latest-
news/article206611679.ece/...](https://www.kansascity.com/latest-
news/article206611679.ece/BINARY/Read%20the%20full%20Schlitterbahn%20corporation%20indictment#storylink=readmore_inline)

[2]
[https://twitter.com/mattdpearce/status/977310924804579329](https://twitter.com/mattdpearce/status/977310924804579329)

------
danepowell
I'm frankly surprised that more people haven't died at Schlitterbahn. Although
this article appears to reference negligence at a corporate level, you have to
keep in mind that the staff is comprised largely of high school aged kids, and
all it takes is a few moments of inattention for someone to drown on these
rides.

Case in point, I could have easily drowned as a kid when one of the staff
allowed too many riders in tubes to go down a chute at once, creating a log
jam at the bottom that I got pulled underneath. The strong current held me
underneath other riders' tubes for a good thirty seconds or so until the jam
loosened. No one noticed or cared even as I came up coughing and sputtering.

Don't get me wrong, most of the staff seemed to take their job pretty
seriously, but in a place as crowded and inherently dangerous as this it
doesn't take much for someone to get hurt.

------
linohh
When I was a kid, we went to TX (I'm from Germany) and everyone recommended
going to New Braunfels because it's so German.

We were quite shocked to see how german it was. It seemed like a hideout for
traditional german values (as in conquering Poland) - no pleasant memory.

~~~
patrickg_zill
.

~~~
linohh
Just a personal memory about the weirdness of having expat communities serving
as a time capsule. They took the then German culture and forked it. From
today’s perspective it would be similar to playing bioshock where a similar
cultural fork happened.

------
userbinator
An interesting thing to calculate is the actual fatality rate, in deaths per
passenger-km. The article mentions that ~100K riders had already taken it, and
the ride is ~100m in length or 0.1km (data found elsewhere on the Internet),
so that nicely works out to 1 in 10K passenger-km.

In contrast, the fatality rate of driving in the US is in the 1 in 100 _M_
range, so the ride was far more dangerous than driving. That gives a good
perspective on the risk.

------
esaym
My grandma lives not far from Schlitterbahn in New Braunfels. I remember one
incident, probably back in 1990 when I was 5 or so, I was at my grandma's
house and some cousins came down to go to Schlitterbahn.

They went without me (was perfectly fine enjoying myself on my grandma's 20
acre property) and they all came back later that night. But the next morning
my one cousin, probably 12-14, stayed in the back room and never came out.
Everyone kept bringing her food and water through out the day but she never
came out.

I finally asked what was wrong to which my (somewhat crude mouthed) grandma
only stated that she hurt herself on a ride and now her vagina is all swelled
up and so she can't walk. Being 5yo I really wasn't sure what the heck that
meant. Actually, I'm still not sure. But the best I can conjecture was she
rode this one really tall water slide where you sit on a plastic sled and I
assume the sled came out from under her and when she hit the "water brake", it
flew in between her legs. But I don't know, and I'm not going to ask...

~~~
MrBuddyCasino
There is a steep slide in a german water park that women aren’t allowed to
ride. The reason is that if ridden with legs spread, water can forcefully
enter the vagina and cause injuries. So that’s a real possibility.

~~~
watwut
Wouldn't that hurt men even more? If they spread legs there are privates and
men tend to be sensitive when those are hit.

~~~
edmccard
>Wouldn't that hurt men even more?

More than the internal injuries that could be caused by water forcibly
entering the vagina? Probably not.

~~~
watwut
Vagína is pretty strong, it holds during childbirth. Males parts can be
injured easily.

~~~
mcphage
That’s the wrong direction, though.

------
brian-armstrong
This article seems to romanticize the ride's creators. Why? They built a ride
that injured and killed from their own intentional neglect. The men should be
regarded as murderers.

~~~
phrz
From Texas. I feel that the article is trying to describe a Texan perspective
of this disaster, reconciling the reality of the criminal negligence and death
with the _very_ heavy nostalgia and romance most Texans have for the New
Braunfels park, pretty much synonymous with childhood for many of us.

------
bagacrap
Somewhat alarming that the net and hoops which are presumably there as a
safety mechanism to prevent leaving the track completely ended up causing
fatal injury.

~~~
userbinator
Indeed, they probably caught his head and then quite naturally, ripped it off.
It seems almost common sense to use something smoother and softer, but as the
saying goes, "common sense isn't common".

You can see them in this video of the ride (start at 1:00)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZsK7zSCJ2w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZsK7zSCJ2w)

~~~
svrtknst
According to the article, the metal hoop seems to have caught him in the neck.
I can't imagine being there in the raft, nor being there as a bystander,
watching.

~~~
StillBored
Having just taken the kids to the new braunfels location..

Oddly, master blaster continues to have the same net and hoop layout. I
wondered about it years ago when I first rode that ride.

[https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=master+blaster+schlitte...](https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=master+blaster+schlitterbahn&view=detail&mid=808F2FB1F90E4B13E63F808F2FB1F90E4B13E63F&FORM=VIRE)

While I didn't ride it this time (the wait is generally really long), I think
I was more aware of the fact that there are a lot of dangerous areas in the
park. A couple years ago when my kids were younger, I saw first hand how just
a bit of running on wet concrete can result in some serious road rash. The
park is very responsive to these kinds of injuries, but they must be very
common.

This time I came away with the idea that these parks are built around 70's era
don't protect the kids from the daily bumps bruises of life mindset. If there
were actual regulation, I suspect there would be a _LOT_ of changes forced on
by the safty crazies.

For starters, many of the rides should probably require helmets. I myself
cracked my head (twice) against concrete tube chutes after having fliped off
tubes in fairly minor drops (just a few feet).

Maintenance isn't really top notch either, years ago I remember sitting at a
picnic table on a windy day and a fairly large limb broke off a nearby tree
and missed a woman and her baby by inches.

This probably won't keep me from going again next year. The place is a blast,
and if you do manage to injure yourself, there is literally a hospital across
the street. It does make me more respectful of the attractions though,
something I don't think most people going there really understand. Water +
speed + hard objects will result it some injuries. Hopefully like many other
activities (riding a bike/skate board, jumping off cliffs, climbing trees,
etc) the user learns where their limits are and if they exceed them, the
injuries aren't life threatening.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Australia seems to have a lot of regulation in an effort to protect children
form injury. As an example, it is not permissible to in the local outdoor pool
_with a ball_. It's not permissible to use a ball in the park surrounding the
pool.

 _You can 't use a ball in the park._

I don't really understand this. Surely a tennis ball can't cause a person to
drown. I suppose you could intentionally throw it hard enough at a persons
head to cause serious injury, especially a small child. It just seems unlikely
that would be occur accidentally.

The red strike-through circles indicating activity _not allowed_ on signs as
you approach the pool and park area tell a short story. Of sterile boredom.
Okay, I'm overreacting.

And, sadly, yet people still die in waterpark accidents here.[1]

1\. [http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-25/four-people-dead-
ride-...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-25/four-people-dead-ride-at-
dreamworld-gold-coast/7963880)

------
lisper
"Instead of using fundamental mathematical and physics calculations to design
and build the ride, the two men had “rushed forward relying almost entirely on
crude trial-and-error methods.” And although they realized that their finished
product “guaranteed that rafts would occasionally go airborne in a manner that
could severely injure or kill the occupants,” they went ahead and opened the
ride anyway."

Yep. All you have to do is _look_ at the thing and apply some basic mechanical
principles (like conservation of energy) to know that you're rolling the dice.
Just a little less friction to dissipate energy on the way to the top of the
second hill and -- whee! -- you're airborne.

~~~
tqkxzugoaupvwqr
The worst are the nets and semicircular loops to which the nets are attached
[1]. To me it is obvious that if you go airborne on the second hill (that has
these nets, too), you will drag the net with you – it might as well not even
exist. All that remains to keep you inside is the metal loops. Well, you are
now flying through a cheese grater.

[1] [https://www.texasmonthly.com/wp-
content/uploads/2018/07/HR_S...](https://www.texasmonthly.com/wp-
content/uploads/2018/07/HR_SCHLITTERBAHN9_0818.jpg)

------
rustcharm
The ride was also loaded badly with two very heavy passengers in back —
exceeding 600 pounds — and a 65 pound kid in front. They need to enforce
weight limits even at the risk of “offending” passengers.

------
bb88
FTA:

    
    
      What’s more, according to court documents, the
      investigators learned that on July 3, 2014, one week
      before the ride’s grand opening, an engineering firm 
      hired by Jeff and Schooley to perform accelerometer tests 
      on Verrückt’s rafts had issued a report suggesting that   
      if the combined weight of the three passengers in a raft 
      was between 400 and 550 pounds—the weight Jeff and 
      Schooley had agreed was appropriate—there was a chance
      the raft would go airborne on the second hill. The ride 
      opened anyway, with the weight range unchanged.
    

So that sounds pretty damning.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
From the indictment:

39\. HENRY remarked, "[Verrückt] could hurt me, it could kill me, it is a
seriously dangerous piece of equipment today because there are things that we
don't know about. Every day we learn more. __* I 've seen what this one has
done to the crash dummies and to the boats we sent down it. Ever since the
prototype. And we had boats flying in the prototype too. __* It 's complex,
it's fast, it's mean. If we mess up, it could be the end. I could die going
down this ride."

These guys are going to gaol for a long time. Unfortunately, that won't undo
anything.

~~~
bb88
Thanks for that. That's as bad as testimony one can get.

------
justizin
Struggling to read this as the original Schlitterbahn in New Braunfels was
pretty much the happiest place on earth to me as a kiddo.

~~~
burlesona
Ugh, yes. Had the same reaction.

------
laretluval
Does Schlitterbahn have a higher fatal accident rate than other water parks?
Other amusement parks?

This incident is horrific in its graphic details but is it actually
exceptional?

~~~
cowboysauce
Getting decapitated by a water slide is exceptional. The only other cases I
can find about amusement park decapitations involve people being struck by
roller coasters after they either entered a restricted area or were thrown out
of a roller coaster. This case might be the only one of someone being
decapitated while they stayed in the ride vehicle. Keep in mind that deaths at
amusement parks are very rare, typically only two or three per year in the
United States. And that's among all amusement parks. Most of those deaths are
either due to pre-existing medical conditions or safety devices failing and
people being ejected from the ride vehicle.

This case is neither. The kid died because the tallest water slide in the
world was designed through trial and error by a guy with no experience in
physics or engineering.

------
tjr225
I used to work in an office at Cerner where you could see this slide from my
floor - really sad when it happened.

------
cmiles74
I was surprised to discover the article didn't mention any engineers that had
worked on the design or implementation being sued for damages. Nor did the
article mention any engineers who refused to construct or otherwise work on
the tallest and most dangerous waterslide in the world.

Perhaps engineers in other fields are not so different from software engineers
after all, published code of conduct aside.

~~~
anamexis
Part of the insanity here is that there were no engineers involved in the
design of the slide. It was largely designed by a co-owner of the park who
possessed "no technical of engineering skills."

~~~
cmiles74
I read that too... I just don't believe it. That seems ridiculous to me. Would
they have to hire an army of handymen to do the construction? It looks way too
large and involved for that. Does the state really allow construction of
something this large and involved without any engineers signing off?

If this is true, I don't think I may ever let my child into a water park. Is
this true of traditional amusement parks as well, I wonder?

~~~
ficklepickle
Their family owns a construction company that was also named in the legal
filings, so I assume they built it.

It defies belief. I don't know how they got insurance for essentially homemade
waterslides.

~~~
smelendez
It seems like most of the insurance and regulatory process assumed independent
manufacturers certifying the equipment. In this case, the manufacturer was
also essentially also the park operator.

------
patrickg_zill
From an engineering viewpoint, one thing that jumps out to me at least, is
that "100,000 people including many kids" had already ridden when this sad
accident happened.

In terms of real-world testing, not even 100,000 tests (or maybe ~33,300 if
each raft had 3 people on it) exposed the problem.

~~~
teraflop
That's giving them way too much benefit of the doubt. The problem _had_ been
exposed by tests before the fatal incident. A number of passengers were
injured by airborne rafts over the course of two years -- and these injuries
were reported and documented by lifeguards. The problem was known even before
the ride opened, thanks to independent test results from an outside
engineering company.

Schlitterbahn ignored and/or attempted to cover up all of these reports, as is
documented in the indictment.

------
duxup
Word of warning... the descriptions in this article are pretty horrifying.

~~~
soapboxrocket
Caleb was my nephews best friend, and the families did a lot together. My
brother-in-law said that he talked to the father after and he said the hardest
part was that they all got in the car to go home after and had an empty seat.

~~~
wyldfire
What did the family do with the settlement money? If my son had died I would
feel so terribly conflicted. Survivor's guilt would be so much worse if I got
to live a life of luxury in exchange for my son.

~~~
AdamM12
You do realize you could like not spend the money lavish manner right?

~~~
wyldfire
Indeed I do! 20 million dollars is a lot of money and I would feel tempted to
spend it on things to make my family's life easier/better. Yet then again if
it served as a reminder of my son's death, I might be persuaded to instead
donate it to a scholarship or charity in my son's name.

Thus my question. Since I don't know how I'd handle it, I'm curious how this
family did.

~~~
AdamM12
Did they actually get that much? I can understand now why you said that given
that amount of money. Although really even $1 could make someone question it's
use.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
From the article:

They eventually agreed that the water park and various companies associated
with the design and construction of Verrückt would pay Caleb’s family a $20
million settlement, an astonishing sum. The two sisters who had ridden behind
Caleb, both of whom suffered facial injuries, also received a settlement, of
an undisclosed amount.

------
wyldfire
I love capitalism and the idea behind laissez faire. I still think it might be
the least bad thing out there but I keep coming back to stuff like this where
people just don't act in their own long-term (or even short-term sometimes)
interest. Caleb's gone, many people who lived in Grenfell Tower are gone, and
now I think many markets where safety is critical deserve some good
regulation.

> He never got a conventional education beyond high school and never formally
> studied physics or engineering.

That alone isn't a bad thing. Maybe he's a visionary for these water rides.
Provided you retain real engineers and take their advice, that is...

> an engineering firm ... issued a report suggesting ... there was a chance
> the raft would go airborne on the second hill. The ride opened anyway, with
> the weight range unchanged.

!!!

> But one of his lawyers acknowledged that Jeff didn’t have such training. He
> added, “Neither did Henry Ford, and he built the car.”

This is actually a mildly compelling argument. Thousands died in cars for
decades [1] before cars competed on safety features and real safety
regulations arrived. However, today, I think and hope that other water parks
and amusement ride designers _do_ conventionally use simulation and other
methods to arrive at safe designs. It's not unreasonably expensive considering
the total expenditure of the ride's design and construction.

States like Kansas should come up with some terribly simple low bars like
requiring professionally licensed engineers to sign off on a ride's design and
maintenance procedures as safe, and requiring annual inspections of ride
service and incident records.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year)

~~~
cmiles74
Is it really possible that no licensed engineers were involved with the
project, and that none of them signed off on anything significant? Based on
the article, it sounds like at least one licensed engineer noticed that rafts
were leaving the track.

~~~
toast0
Given that Kansas apparently allows water parks to self-assess the safety of
their rides, and that the owner of the park doesn't care about safety, but has
a construction background, it's not a surprise to me that no engineers were
involved in the design.

It's not a good idea to build public buildings without the input of a
structrural engineer, but it's not impossible.

------
techsupporter
Maybe as a way to help compartmentalism from what the article is describing, I
keep wondering: why do “long form” stories all seem to follow the same script?

\- Introduction to the subject

\- Introduction to the “characters”

\- “Dramatic thing began to happen, with seemingly innocuous steps taken
towards the unforeseen conclusion, but then, as the thing begins to unfo—“

\- “Back in 1823, when the ancestor of the grandfather of the person who first
set these steps tangentially in motion was born, baby rattles were just
becoming popular...” [119 paragraphs giving a detailed biography of the main
person]

\- “And now, the conclusion...”

~~~
sqrt17
The answer, maybe the one you're looking for is that the schema you describe
is suitable for blowing up into longform stories that could be equally well-
suited to be treated in 400 words or less.

The question would be, do we care for longform as a format (as opposed to
having bite-sized stories with links between them if they're part of something
bigger)? Or do we care about stories that have substantial background that
needs to be explained (rather than be a tangential addition to a main story)?

~~~
oeuviz
It is not only suitable to blow it up but also to shorten it in any way you
want. You just omit literaly any paragraph and the reader is still able to
grasp the story. Also, using this format the story can be extended anytime
without restructuring the text.

But yeah, I agree it is not enjoyable to read.

------
Animats
They killed a politician's 10 year old child with a badly designed water
slide. If it hadn't been a elected official, they'd probably still be
operating.

~~~
sethev
I doubt that. I live in Kansas City and the public shock was pretty much
immediate - even before it was reported who it was. There's no way that ride
was staying open.

Also, the park is still operating just not that ride.

