Today's PDF is a story of extraordinary incompetence leading to a death at a county fair.
"Free Fall USA" was a county fair attraction consisting of a 36-foot (11m) scaffolding tower and an airbag. (Previously it was a scissor lift and an airbag, but the owner had recently upgraded to scaffolding.) Members of the public were allowed to climb to the top and jump off onto the airbag. You can see a video of the apparatus (post-accident, but no gore, it's just B-roll of the site) at this link.
The owner/designer appears to be, basically, Just Some Dude who thought it would be cool but had no professional expertise or organization or... basically any mediating factors between "dude thinks this would be cool" and "dude opens this to the general public." Operators were paid as low as $75 a day and did not consistently wear safety harnesses, and the only engineer who maybe was involved (no name was given and records were not produced) only made a plan for the scaffolding. Signs were posted on the attraction informing patrons that they had to jump within 30 seconds of getting to the top and would not get a refund if they didn't jump.
The airbag manufacturer is listed as "unknown" in the report, but I am 99% certain it is the Allround Airbag by Bagjump, which is advertised as being safe for public use up to 10m, which is, strictly speaking, less than 11m, but honestly that wasn't the problem here.
The problem was that the only real safety measure in place was to instruct participants to take a running leap to make sure they landed in the middle of the airbag. The airbag was not flush against the tower nor were there nets or anything to catch people who missed their jump. This accident wasn't just possible, it was inevitable - a woman got scared and hesitated, which led to her slipping off the tower instead of leaping, which meant that she fell short of the airbag and landed on the ground, sustaining a fatal head injury.
There is a superficially similar attraction called a SCAD tower which has a surprisingly good safety record considering what it is, but the key difference is that participants do not jump into the catch device, they are dropped while already centered over it. (also, they have helmets, which probably wouldn't make a huge difference in any likely scenario tbh, but it adds to the impression that they maybe had an adult look over this plan at some point) It is not left up to the athletic ability, good judgement, or confidence of the participant to make sure they land in the part that won't kill them.
The only record I can find of legal consequences for the owner/designer of the Free Fall USA attraction (Aspen Decker; all Google results return an Indigenous educator who is definitely a different person) was an $8500 fine from Cal/OSHA for failing to ensure employees wore safety harnesses. A wrongful death suit was filed but I couldn't find the outcome - given the Just Some Dude nature of the operation there probably wasn't much money to claim anyway.
In my long and storied career of collecting incident reports I have seen amusement ride incidents that were more gruesome, or had more victims, but I've never seen one as fucking stupid as encouraging members of the public to free fall 11 meters with a safety plan of "it's fine as long as you don't flinch."
