Raging Spirits Accident Report Released

OLC has released the accident report for the incident that happend on May 28, 2012.

Here is the report in Japanese.

http://www.olc.co.jp/wpmu/wp-content...0120604_01.pdf

I have read the report and it says that the accident happened when the safety bar rose up as the ride vehicle was dispatched. The Guest sitting in that seat tried to exit because the bar popped up and he was slightly hurt due to falling out of the moving vehicle at the loading station.

The report goes on in extreme detail about why the bar came up in the first place.

The vehicle was not fully occupied with one seat open. Naturally there was no Guest to pull down the saftey bar on the open seat, and before it was pulled down by a Cast Member, the ride operator dispatched the vehicle. Finally seeing the empty seat's bar up, the Cast Member then halted the vehicle. When a Cast Member went to lower the safety bar on the empty seat, it would not lower because the vehicles are designed to lock the bar in place one the vehicle is dispatched. In order to lower the saftey bar, the Cast Member stepped on the mannual release pedal which unlocked the entire row. The Guest who was injured was sitting in the row next to the empty seat so his safety bar was unlocked unknowingly. The Cast Member pulled down the bar for the empty seat and the vehicle was again dispatched. The unlocked safety bar of the Guest popped up and that is when he decided to try to get out. The Cast Member seeing the Guest falling properly applied the brakes to bring the vehicle to a stop however the Guest was slightly injured.

Raging Spirits was closed during this investigation but will be re-opening June 14. In order to prevent the same sort of occurance from happening again, all Cast Members will be re-trained to learn the proper procedure for handling similar occurances in the future.

Here is the big kicker though......

Because of the injury to the one Guest and all the trouble it caused for many other Guests....OLC is docking the pay of several of its executive officers.

30% reduction monthly salary, President, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, Executive Vice President for 1 month
20% reduced monthly salary, Managing Director, Senior Managing Director for 1 month
10% reduced monthly salary directors and executive officers for one month

As this indicates. OLC takes this accident very seriously and is sincerly sorry that it happened. And it backed this up with hard cash penalties.

Good to see a reaction from OLC.

I wonder how much was cut from the paychecks of the people running DLP after many accidents on the dangerous BTM.

Thank you Roger for translating, and I am amazed they are docking executive pay. That seems a bit extreme to me, but then again this is probably a Japanese mindset.

I didn't see it on TV, but I'm pretty sure there was or will be a public apology by the company executives where they will not only apologize but also do a very deep bow of their heads in unison. This sort of public apology along with the docking of pay is what is expected in Japan from the coorporate officers when accidents, mistakes, scandals, etc happen.

Sometimes you even hear about officials who have caused or been accused of causing shame to their company ending up commiting suicide. This is all very Japanese attitude and behavior.

I think a similar pay freeze was in place several years back when Space Mountain de-railed. No update on the status of the Cast Member to blame for incident.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Malin

I think a similar pay freeze was in place several years back when Space Mountain de-railed. No update on the status of the Cast Member to blame for incident.

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From what I read there was no one CM to blame. To me it seems like there were several CMs that needed to better understand the proper proceedure to follow when an incident like this happens.

Did you see information blaming a single CM on another source or was it in the PR I shared? I'd like to see the official translation of the PR to English so I can better understand everything.

This news article from The Mainichi, seems to suggest a single Cast Member was to blame. Or it might of misread the statement provided by the OLC.

Tokyo DisneySea operator links roller coaster mishap to staffer's mistake

Thanks for the link to the Mainichi.

Yeah, that article makes it sound like it was just the fault of the CM who unlocked the safety bars to push it down.

From what I got from the entire accident report is that the CM who dispatched the vehicle initially with the one safety bar still up also did not follow proper proceedure.

I'm guessing there are other CMs that also have responsibility from an oversight and supervisory perspective that should have been backing up what the hands on CMs were doing.

Just another interesting note about how OLC treats these types of incidents.

As some of you may have already known, after the accident both the Official Tokyo Disney Resort Blog and Official Tokyo Disney Resort Twitter account both suspended updating their feeds. These sites are used for promoting what is going on at the parks.

Now that the accident report has been filed, official appology issued, and the executive officer's penalties all have been announced, both the blog and Twitter feed are up and running again.

I think this is a very classy move by OLC to not promote the business while there is an incident investigation going on. I'm pretty sure they didn't want the perception that they are diluting or trivializing the seriousness of the incident by conducting business as usual.

If you all recall how OLC/TDR conducted themselves during the aftermath of the Great Tohoku Earthquake, you can really see how OLC and Japanese society in general differs from what we have here in the states.

This is not to say that TWDC does not take things like this as serious as they should. On the contrary, I think Disney most always does a great job addressing incidents and reaching out to the community in both normal times and in times of need.

I just think that OLC takes responsibility and the concern for public perception to the next level.

Wow, my mind is a little blown with the way they deal with situations like these. I think I like it better than how things are handled state-side

Compare the way the Japanese at OLC are behaving with what happened at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim a few years ago. No execs lost their jobs or any money over the improper CM training that lead to the SS Columbia pulling the cleat off the dock and killing a woman on Christmas Eve in ... I think, 1998 or so. Nope, no docking of anyone's pay, president of the Disneyland Resort didn't get fired. Nothing but a big payout for the lawsuit. Unless I'm mistaken, they still didn't learn their lesson and a few years later some poor guy got killed on Big Thunder Mountain due to reduced/poor mainenance.

Big difference in corporate citizenship and behavior.