Roller coaster to have seat belts after man fell to death at amusement park

Roller coaster to have seat belts after man fell to death at amusement park Hassan Jihad Ibn Kariem, 42, died after being ejected from his seat on the Goliath coaster at Six Flags Over Georgia and now the amusement park is set to install seat belts An amusement park where a man fell to his death is to install seat belts on the roller coaster says its operator. Six Flags announced the extra safeguard less than two weeks after 42-year-old Hassan Jihad Ibn Kariem of Atlanta died after being ejected from his seat on the Goliath coaster at Six Flags Over Georgia. The chief executive of Six Flags says the company will now introduce the seat belts on that roller coaster and it will also put them on similar rides as part of safety upgrades. “We are reinforcing safety precautions at our parks and taking additional measures, including adding seat belts on Goliath and other coasters with a similar restraint,” said John Reilly, president and CEO of Six Flags Entertainment Corporation. Goliath remains shut down while state and local officials investigate the tragic death on October 12. Reilly didn’t specify which other Six Flags coasters will get seat belts but it has temporarily closed eight additional roller coasters at five other parks in the US and Canada. Those rides all share the same manufacturer and a similar restraint system. Six Flags hasn’t said when those coasters are expected to reopen. Reilly’s statement said Six Flags has enlisted independent engineers and inspectors to review safety procedures for all rides at its theme parks. Investigators haven’t said what went wrong on the Georgia coaster. Witnesses said they saw Kariem rise up out of his seat and fall headfirst back into the cart before being ejected. Some people who rode Goliath before him that day said they had concerns about its restraints. All nine of the Six Flags coasters taken offline were manufactured by the Swiss company Bolliger & Mabillard. They also feature similar clamshell restraints that sit at the top of a vertical bar between each rider’s knees. The bar locks a padded restraint into place over the rider’s lap and upper legs. The US patent granted to Bolliger & Mabillard for the restraint system in 2001 says it’s designed to make each rider feel “that he is seated on a flying carpet or that he is at the controls of a kind of flying scooter, while still guaranteeing optimum security.” Following the death in Georgia, non-Six Flags theme parks SeaWorld Orlando in Florida and La Ronde in Montreal, Canada, also temporarily closed one roller coaster apiece that use clamshell restraints. SeaWorld reopened its Mako coaster on Tuesday after it had been offline for a week.