Secrets The Roller Coaster Industry Doesn't Want You To Know

May 2024 · 2 minute read

In 2016, NBC says there were 30,900 emergency room visits for injuries "caused by amusement park attractions." In the industry's defense, though, it's not clear how many of those injuries happened on roller coasters vs., you know, choking on a funnel cake while riding the merry-go-round or something. So it might be more useful to just look at roller coaster deaths and then extrapolate from there just how dangerous thrill rides actually are.

Between 2010 and 2017, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission says there were 22 thrill ride fatalities. Not all of them, though, were people getting killed on rides — sometimes people get killed doing stupid things, like getting struck while trying to retrieve a lost item. And the industry points out that 335 million people visit amusement parks every year, so the fatality rate is really very low. Those numbers, though, don't say how many people are actually riding, compared to how many people are all, "I'll just sit this one out and make sure no one steals your purse, honey," so we don't really have any solid numbers.

Still, the International Association for Amusement Parks says your chances of sustaining a theme-park injury serious enough to get you an overnight hospital stay is about one in 16 million, which is way, way better than your 1 in 700,000 chance of being struck by lightning in any given year.

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