15 Most Deadly Roller Coaster Accidents

The Big Dipper had been the central attraction at London's Battersea Park funfair for two decades, before the wooden coaster took a tragic turn on May 30, 1972. The ride malfunctioned, when the rope hoisting one of the trains upward broke loose and sent the carriage line on a backwards free fall the ride's operator was unable to slow with the ride's braking mechanism. The tail car came off the rails when it came upon a turn and "crumpled" into the barrier, after which the two other cars attached crashed on top of it, killing five children and injuring 13 others.

The operator's son, John Collins, later explained the disaster was "a combination of malfunctions which shouldn't have happened." One girl, who was on the ride and witnessed the catastrophe unfolding, described the gruesome accident by saying, "we went 'round the corner, and the first carriage had just reached the top, and I think the cable broke, I don't know, and it all came backwards very quickly." Another child who saw the crash said that it was "most of the people in the back [who] got all crushed up in there." The coaster was immediately dismantled, and the entire fair eventually closed altogether. Survivors of the incident say they still experience mental distress as a result of the gruesome scene.

The indoor Mindbender coaster at West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada was reportedly declared safe by an inspector just one day before its rear car came off its tracks on June 14, 1986, due to missing wheel assembly bolts. As CBC reports, four passengers were hurled from the car, which was going about 60 miles per hour, after it struck a pillar. Three didn't survive, and 19 others to the hospital with serious injuries. 

A man named Rod Chayko was in the last car and survived the incident, but with devastating injuries, such as a broken pelvis, shoulder, ribs and legs, a punctured lung, plus he had to re-learn to walk. He later described the scene in ghastly detail, telling the Toronto Sun, "We had gone up and were done [with] the big drop where we got our speed — we were getting ready to go into the whirlee and our car started to fishtail. I grabbed onto the safety bar we had back then and I held on, but the next time it went over, my lap bar was released. I flew."

The ride was redesigned, repainted, re-opened months later, and still runs to this day.

If a roller coaster that allows its passengers to stand sounds like a bad idea, maybe it's because it is. Japan's Expoland became the site of a horrific disaster on May 5, 2007, when the wheel axle on one of the cars of its standing Fujin Raijin II ride came loose, hurling its passengers into a guardrail, killing one 19-year-old student and injuring 19 others. Even worse, it was Children's Day, so many of the riders were kids.

One witness to the scene said, "the roller coaster was swinging left to right." Even those who weren't watching could tell something was wrong when they "heard a scraping sound followed by people screaming. It came to a halt at last after a sound I can hardly describe in words." Another woman, who'd ridden just before the accident, claimed to have experienced a feeling of nearly being thrown from the ride during her run.

The park, which had been open since 1972, reopened that year, but closed a few months later due to dwindled customer patronage.

Bell's Amusement Park's Wildcat ride turned into a place of chaos on April 20, 1997, when one of the cars disengaged from the tracks while ascending its hill, causing it to careen backwards into another vehicle. A 14-year-old boy in the front car was ejected, hit his head, and fell to his death. Six other passengers were injured.

"It was terrifying," said one of the adult riders on-board, whose nine-year-old daughter was among the injured, after she was ejected and hit her head on a metal beam. "There was nothing we could do to prevent it ... It shook my insides, it was so hard." The ride, which had been inspected two weeks prior to the incident, was then dismantled and relocated to Ocean City, Maryland's Jolly Roger Amusement Park and renamed The Avalanche. It operated from 2008 until 2014, when it was sold to a park in Lima, Peru.

Willard's Whizzer at Marriott's Great America Amusement Park was known to have had issues with its braking system prior to March 29, 1980, when the ride's faulty mechanics sent one car crashing into another, smashing into would-be passengers attempting to board the ride. A 13-year-old boy suffered fatal internal injuries to his chest and abdomen as a result of him falling on the rocks below, and eight others were also hurt.

An employee of the park told press that "two systems had to break down for this to happen," including an electric safety mechanism which ensures adequate distance between cars. "The odds against that happening must be astronomical." The ride was later modified and renamed, before closing in 1988.

The Treetop Twister at New Yorkshire's Lightwater Valley theme park was a brand new addition that the park proudly billed as a "hair-raising cross between a roller coaster and a waltzer." It had only been in operation for a month before it cost one British student her life, on June 21, 2001. Several of the cars crashed into one another, after an overlooked wiring mistake over-rode the emergency systems which should've prevented the collision.

The victim's boyfriend, who was among several who were also injured by the accident, described the moments leading up to the crash, saying the couple "noticed a car in front and ... knew something was wrong. We went halfway up a slope and hit the car and rebounded. We saw a car behind us coming round the corner and we went backwards and hit it." The 20-year-old woman, Gemma Savage, died after being air-lifted to a hospital after suffering severe head and spinal injuries. Her family sued the park, but her death was ruled a misadventure, rather than an unlawful killing, and no charges were brought against the ride's maintenance worker.

Despite its devastating beginning, the ride still remains in operation under the abbreviated name Twister, and was the site of another dangerous flub, when a worker started up the ride as a joke while another was doing checks on it. The victim was thrown 13 meters into the air before another attendant stopped the motion before it could cause further harm, but she was still traumatized.

Even kiddie coasters have been known to turn deadly. A three-year-old boy named Jayson Dansby was riding an indoor mini-coaster with his twin brother at Go Bananas in Norridge, Illinois on April 2, 2011, when he wriggled out of his restraints and stood up. He soon lost his balance and fell backwards to his death, after being wedged between the moving cars. The toddler's parents witnessed the tragedy, and the center's owner was charged with not keeping maintenance records on-hand for investigation.

The boy's parents, along with several witnesses, sued the site after the incident, but the park reopened just a few days later, after passing a state inspection. The ride is still operational to this day.

Six Flags Over Mid-America was the site of a sudden calamity on July 7, 1984, when 46-year-old Stella Holcomb slipped from the new standing Rail Blazer coaster, and was flung 20 feet to her death. "As we made this sharp whip, she was gone, just like that," her husband, who was also on the ride, said of her fall.

Park managers touted the ride's safety design after the incident, saying "we have a locked shoulder brace, a knee harness, and a third safety belt that's also locked on top of it, so from a theoretical standpoint that shouldn't have occurred." They also suggested that she may have fainted during the ride, and that her weight may have been a factor as well, but her husband disagreed with that assessment. Her family settled with the company for $1.8 million, and the park replaced its standing coaster cars with the original train cars that had been in place for a decade before.