Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:
- A 42-year-old Atlanta educator died October 12, after being ejected from the Goliath roller coaster at Six Flags Over Georgia, Cobb County police said. The cause remains under investigation.
- Six Flags also closed nine additional coasters across six parks. The incident has renewed a broader question: Who inspects fixed-site rides in the U.S.—and what can those inspections tell the public?
- Although the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) was the federal regulator of fixed-site roller coasters when created in 1972, Congress stripped the agency of that oversight authority in 1981, creating what’s known today as the “roller coaster loophole”
At 3:58 p.m. local time on Monday, October 12, the Cobb County Police Department responded to a grisly incident at Six Flags Over Georgia. According to eyewitness reports, Hassan Jihad Ibn Kariem—a 42-year-old resident and teacher at Wesley International Academy in the metro Atlanta area—was ejected from his seat while riding the Goliath roller coaster, hitting and injuring other people on the coaster before plummeting onto the roof of a haunted house attraction.
One witness told the local NBC affiliate WXIA that Goliath’s souvenir cameras actually captured the incident, and when the roller coaster car returned to the loading area, eyewitnesses saw a loose safety bar, an empty seat, and a woman next to the seat covered in blood. Connor Thompson, who was in line for the ride, told CBS News that chaos quickly erupted.
“Everyone was kind of confused at first, and then there was someone who was yelling, ‘Call 911! Someone fell out!’” he said. “At first it was almost like I didn't believe it because I thought that was like impossible for something like that to happen.”
In fact, it’s improbable—but not impossible.
Despite their death-defying engineering, hairpin turns, and thrill-seeking construction, roller coasters are regulated through a ramshackle patchwork of state agencies. In the case of Georgia, that task falls to the Insurance and Safety Fire commissioner, who on Tuesday reported that the Goliath had undergone safety inspections before the park season began.
“Our very professional inspectors have inspected every one of those before the park season even started, and they’re currently on the ground looking at every nook and cranny, conducting interviews and conducting a thorough review of what happened,” incumbent Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner John King said during an Atlanta Press Club debate. This tragic event occurred mere weeks after Six Flags closed another roller coaster in California over concerns in civil lawsuits that the ride caused brain injuries.
So, are amusement park rides safe? Yes—statistically speaking, at least. The International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions estimates that the chances of being seriously injured on a roller coaster is about one in every 15.5 million rides. But in 2022, the University of Pennsylvania’s The Regulatory Review pointed out that those figures come from voluntary surveys. In 2019, for example, that data only covered roughly 177 of 436 amusement parks in the U.S.
Scrutiny of theme park oversight is hardly new. Back in 2001, Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts introduced legislation to reinstate the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) as a nationwide regulator. The CPSC initially regulated fixed-site theme parks upon its creation in 1972, but industry advocates lobbied to remove this oversight in 1981, creating what’s known as the “roller coaster loophole.”
The starkest consequence came in 2016, when a 10-year-old Kansas boy was decapitated on a water slide. Prior to his death, 13 people had been injured on the same slide in just two years, but Kansas never inspected it, according to The Regulatory Review. The following year, state lawmakers passed the Kansas Amusement Ride Act, which improved inspection requirements and mandated injury reports, but fell short of requiring the CPSC to get involved.
“Fifty states in the United States of America and no two inspect rides the same way. That’s wrong,” amusement park safety consultant Ken Martin told the Associated Press following the tragedy in 2016. “We’re not close to being in the same book, state to state. We’re not even on the same page of the hymnal. We certainly aren’t singing in key.”
Out of caution, Six Flags has suspended operations of nine other roller coasters at six parks across the U.S. The fuller picture of what inspections are catching—and missing—comes from the states that bother to collect it. A CNN analysis of public records and court filings published this week found hundreds of injury and malfunction reports across more than a dozen Six Flags parks in just three states over the past five years. California regulators alone have fielded nearly 300 accident reports from Six Flags properties since 2021. New Jersey records document a 2024 train derailment caused by equipment failure and repeated instances of lap bars opening mid-ride, sometimes because of broken bolts. The Magic Mountain coaster shuttered last month had stayed open for nearly two decades despite a documented history of brain injuries.
Every one of those rides had been inspected. Georgia, for its part, has not yet released its own records to CNN.
Inspection, it turns out, is not the same thing as accountability.
Darren lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes/edits about sci-fi and how our world works. You can find his previous stuff at Gizmodo and Paste if you look hard enough.