Kansas Amusement Ride Safety Bill in the Works

Members of a Kansas House committee are pushing to ramp up oversight of temporary and permanent amusement park rides after a lawmaker’s son was killed on a waterslide last year, but the bill that would allow it to happen could face changes before getting a vote.

The state’s requirement that amusement parks self-inspect their rides annually came under scrutiny after Rep. Scott Schwab’s 10-year-old son, Caleb Schwab, was killed on Schlitterbahn Waterpark’s Verruckt waterslide in Kansas City, Kansas. The 168-foot-tall waterslide, which was dubbed the world’s tallest, had passed its annual self-inspection.

The slide has since been shut down, and the family reached an undisclosed settlement in January with the park owners and the manufacturer of the raft that carried Caleb on the ride.

Rep. John Barker, chairman of the House Federal and State Affairs Committee, said the amusement park laws in Kansas are some of the loosest. He compared the state’s self-inspecting to requiring drivers to report their own speed limit violations.

“Every time you speed do you want to report yourself?” Barker said. “So you need some verification.”

He said he couldn’t know for sure whether the measure would have prevented Caleb’s death, but he hopes it can prevent others.

Lawmakers and some members of the amusement park industry are united behind the idea of requiring qualified outside inspectors to do the ride checks.

The bill would mandate annual inspections for permanent rides. Temporary ones would be inspected each time a ride is set up at a new location. The inspections would have to be done by a licensed engineer with at least two years of experience in amusement rides — one of those in inspections — or someone with five years of amusement ride experience with at least two of those in inspections.

But industry members said other states allow people certified by the National Association of Amusement Ride Safety Officials to do inspections and that including those people in Kansas’ bill would help ensure the state has enough inspectors.

The committee could tweak the bill before it gets a vote. Barker said the members would look at possible amendments. One member, Rep. John Whitmer, said he would be introducing amendments, including making the national ride association’s inspector certification part of the possible qualifications for a ride inspector in Kansas.

Andrew Evans, who said he owns a carnival and is a certified inspector, said Kansas should also hire some state-paid inspectors to do random spot checks.