Japanese Roller Coaster Derails, Nobody Notices
A roller coaster in Japan derailed with adults and children on-board and oddly, nobody seemed to notice until crews brought out some tools.
By nowproducerdave on March 26, 2018
This sounds like a headline from one of those satirical news websites that makes up fake stories with outlandish headlines, but this time the story appears true. Fortunately nobody was injured because, well, in a nutshell, the roller coaster is billed as the “Japan’s slowest.”
It happened in slow motion, really – no pun intended. A roller coaster in Japan is a “family coaster,” as in it’s safe and slow for the little ones. At best, it achieves a speed of something close to a relaxing jog – about 8-and-a-half miles per hour. That’s why when it derailed, nobody noticed, according to one witness. She says “The coaster was moving so slowly, I didn’t notice it had stopped.” In terms of roller coaster malfunctions, a derailment is the most dangerous, but at a speed close to a brisk walk, disaster was luckily avoided.
Another witness who was riding at the time mentioned that crews working at the theme park came onto the tracks and started to not only try to push the coaster to get it moving, they were actually hitting things with hammers. And apparently not one time did any of the crew talk to the passengers about what was going on. That was the most scary part of the derailment to the passenger. Not the fact that the ride derailed – but that crews were beating it with a hammer. Almost an hour passed before the fire department arrived to help guests off the ride. There were 7 parents and 12 children on the ride.
What’s Japan’s slowest roller coaster look like?
Any derailment is a serious problem, we’re not downplaying or trying to joke about the situation here. The ride was only about 16 feet above the ground, but that’s still high enough to cause some serious, life-altering injuries – and can even cause death easily – it’s no laughing matter. Again, nobody was injured, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a serious problem, even on “Japan’s slowest coaster.” See some more on the story here.
