The owner of Alton Towers, Merlin Entertainments, has been found guilty of breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act, overlooking crucial safety measures that ultimately led to the rollercoaster crash in 2015.
The tragic incident, which resulted in two passengers having their limbs amputated and three others suffering life-changing injuries, occurred as a result of the Smiler rollercoaster’s operatives overriding the controlling computer system, which ultimately led to the train carrying the passengers colliding with a stationary train that had remained on the rollercoaster.
Admitting fault for the devastating accident, a spokesman for Merlin said: “Merlin Attractions Operations Limited today pleaded guilty to an offence under the Health and Safety at Work Act. From the outset, the company has accepted responsibility for what happened in June last year and it has cooperated fully with the Health & Safety Executive in its investigation.
“We have sought to provide help and support to all those injured in the accident and will continue to do so.”
HSE prosecutor Bernard Thorogood revealed to the court that while the Smiler was “found to be without any fault at all,” but that the systems put in place on the ride didn’t allow staff to have an adequate amount of control over it. Thorogood explained: “It was a mechanically sound computer-operated ride which required human intervention at many points during operation. There was an absence of a proper settled system for staff to work to in certain situations and one of those was that when one of the up-to-five trains came to a halt around the system in one section there was not a good enough system for staff to interact with that problem and a proper procedure to sort it out.”
Merlin has accepted responsibility for the tragic incident, with the court saying that they will be expected to pay a “very large fine.” They will be sentenced at Stafford Crown Court on May 20th.
