Disney Ride’s Design Is Focus After Injury

State investigators are focusing on the design of Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin ride at Disneyland in their probe of a Friday accident that critically injured a 4-year-old boy, an official close to the case said Monday.

A source with the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, who asked not to be named, said investigators are looking at the restraint system on the spinning ride, which consists of a simple lap bar, and the ride’s car design, including the cut-out opening for loading passengers.

“You’d figure that, ergonomically, it wasn’t designed to restrain a wiggly child,” the source said.

After an accident on a similar spinning ride this year at Universal Studios Florida, park officials installed seat belts to supplement the lap bars and keep passengers on board, a company spokesman said.

The injured boy in the Disneyland accident was identified Monday as Brandon Zucker of Canyon Country in northern Los Angeles County. The boy was riding in a Roger Rabbit “taxi cab” with his mother--on her 40th birthday--when he toppled out and was pinned under a second car, which was carrying his father and a grandparent.

Doctors do not know whether Brandon will recover. Since Friday, he has undergone two surgeries to repair a collapsed lung and damage to his diaphragm, spleen and liver. He remained in a drug-induced coma Monday, on life support at UCI Medical Center in Orange.

“He’s a tough guy,” said Dr. Marianne Cinat, a trauma surgeon at UCI who has been overseeing the boy’s care. “He’s come a long way since Friday. . . . But he’s not out of the woods yet.”

Brandon’s parents, David and Victoria Zucker, released a prepared statement Monday.

“We appreciate the prayers and support we have been given during this very difficult time,” they wrote. “We are blessed with wonderful, caring family and friends and trust that Brandon is getting the best care possible. We believe our strong faith in God and the UCI doctors will help Brandon recover from his injuries.”

The Roger Rabbit attraction, a 6-year-old ride in the dark, will remain closed until the Division of Occupational Safety and Health finishes its investigation, agency and Disneyland officials said.

Richard Stephens, a spokesman for the state agency, said the ride car’s design and possible changes will be obvious angles to pursue. His division investigates serious amusement-park accidents under a law that took effect this year.

“You certainly don’t want someone to fall off any ride,” Stephens said. “So we’ll see what the story was on this one and what we’ll require in the future.”

The investigation will cover other areas, including whether Disney should have had more than the three workers managing the ride, whether employees were properly trained and whether the equipment was properly used. The agency will also look at whether spinning rides should have doors and additional restraints.

“There are no conclusions yet and we don’t want to speculate,” Stephens said.

Disneyland spokesman Ray Gomez declined to discuss the park’s employee training program, the adequacy of lap bars or what might have gone wrong Friday night.

“That’s part of the OSHA investigation--the mechanical configuration of the attraction, the procedures, how everything was done,” Gomez said. “I can’t give any more information on that at this time.”

Seating Positions Could Be an Issue

Another key question for investigators is where the boy was sitting in the ride car--whether he was on the enclosed side or whether his mother was seated there, with him near the opening.

An Anaheim police report on the case does not indicate where the boy was sitting or what he was doing before he fell from the car, City Atty. Jack White said Monday. In addition, he said, the report does not indicate that police interviewed family members. And officials with Disneyland and the state division investigating the accident said they did not know where the boy was seated.

The industry trend is away from common lap bars on bench seats and toward individual restraints, said Bob Ochsner, a spokesman for Knott’s Berry Farm. Knott’s has only two rides with lap bars on bench seats--Kingdom of the Dinosaurs and Rocky Road Trucking Company--and the policy on those is to seat children or smaller people on the inside, away from the opening, he said.

“If you’ve got a very, very insistent parent who demands that the child ride on the outside--a situation where they’re basically taking all the responsibility themselves--then they may sometimes prevail” and the child winds up beside the opening, Ochsner said.

“But if there’s any way we can do it, the child will wind up on the inside position,” Ochsner said.

Gomez said Disneyland does not have “specific criteria” in that regard.

“We believe all occupants are safe no matter where they are seated, as long as they remain seated at all times during the ride, and keep their arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times,” he said.

Former Disney engineer Francis Weigand, who helped design the Roger Rabbit ride, said a similar accident involved another boy this year at a Universal Studios Florida attraction called Men in Black. On that fantasy ride, cars spin wildly when attacked by aliens.

The child “was sitting on the outboard side, there was no door, and he fell out,” said Weigand, now an independent consultant based in La Crescenta. “In that case, the dad managed to get out, too, and he saved the kid.”

Universal put individual seat belts in the ride cars in addition to the lap bars, “and that was the end of it,” said park spokesman Jim Yeager.

When single lap bars are the only restraints, the burden is on employees at the ride to make sure the vehicle is safely loaded, Weigand said. Other amusement-park safety experts also have said that it’s a rule of thumb at theme parks to place the child in the more sheltered position of a ride when there’s only a lap bar and an open side.

Federal consumer protection officials have investigated 11 accidents involving lap bars in the last nine years. Two of the accidents were fatal.

“We’re very concerned about the spike in accidents that we’ve seen over the last three years,” said Jane Francis, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Her agency does not regulate amusement parks, only carnival and other rides that move from location to location.

In California, theme parks fought off state regulation for decades, but a law requiring safety inspections of rides and reporting of serious accidents was signed a year ago by Gov. Gray Davis. The law, sponsored by state Assemblyman Tom Torlakson (D-Antioch), was passed after several high-profile accidents, including a Christmas Eve 1998 accident that killed a Washington state tourist. That accident, on Disneyland’s Columbia Sailing Ship ride, was blamed on inadequate employee training and misuse of equipment.

“One of the benefits, ultimately, of the new law is that all of the accident records will be public records and we will be able to see trends in accidents that can be analyzed to prevent future accidents,” Torlakson said.

The Division of Occupational Safety and Health will hold a public hearing Oct. 20 in Oakland to hear testimony on its proposed rules for inspections.

Officials at other California theme parks said they don’t rely simply on lap bars--particularly on rides for small children.

A spokesman at Six Flags Magic Mountain said the Valencia park’s rides for children have doors that close mechanically and cannot be opened while the ride is moving.

“On all of our children’s rides, we have taken the responsibility that wherever you sit, you will be safe,” said park spokesman Andy Gallardo.

Safety mechanisms vary according to the ride at Magic Mountain, said Gallardo. Roller coasters, for instance, have individual restraints, while other rides have lap bars, he said.

But Jerry Aldrich, a ride safety expert from Orlando, Fla., said it was impossible to design a ride to fit everyone.

“When an accident happens, it’s usually not just one thing,” Aldrich said. “Usually, it’s two or three circumstances that build up, and that’s when something happens.”

*

Contributing to this report were staff writers Matthew Ebnet, Jessica Garrison, H.G. Reza and Kimi Yoshino, and correspondent Theresa Moreau.