Alton Towers owner fined 'record' £5m over Smiler crash

Alton Towers owner Merlin Entertainments has been fined £5m over the horrific crash on its Smiler rollercoaster last year.

Solicitor Paul Paxton, acting for eight of the 16 victims, said the penalty is "believed to be a record for the industry", says ITV News.

Sixteen people were injured when a car full of passengers collided with an empty carriage in June last year, says the Daily Mirror. One man's knees were shattered, another suffered a punctured lung and two women needed leg amputations.

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Merlin originally blamed "human error", but later rescinded that statement, says the BBC.

Prosecutors argued "workers had not been given a system to follow which would safely deal with the issue", adds the broadcaster.

A report from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) said Merlin "failed to put in place systems that allowed their engineers to work safely on the ride while it was running".

It added: "This made it all too easy for a whole series of unchecked mistakes… to result in tragedy".

The judge described the incident as a "catastrophic failure".

The crash occurred as a result of a sequence of events that included the ride being closed due to a warning light being activated, a new car being added to deal with high volumes of customers and engineers failing to spot that a test car sent out before the ride was reopened had become stuck.

HSE said the errors could be a result of "mistaken priorities" and that engineers felt "pressure" to get the ride back up and running.

"Management had set targets for downtime on rides, with bonuses link to achieving acceptable low levels," it said.

Merlin Entertainments chief executive Nick Varney said: "Alton Towers - and indeed the wider Merlin Group - are not emotionless corporate entities. They are made up of human beings who care passionately about what they do.

"In this context, the far greater punishment for all of us is knowing that on this occasion we let people down with devastating consequences."

Alton Towers: Broken-down rollercoaster causes fresh panic

3 May

Dozens of people were left trapped on a rollercoaster after it ground to a halt at Alton Towers, nearly a year after a serious crash at the theme park.

The Air Galactica ride left 28 people hanging upside down due to bad weather yesterday afternoon.

"Heavy rain obscured a sensor on Galactica which meant that the ride was automatically stopped," said Alton Towers in a statement.

"This is a standard safety feature on this ride and the ride was working exactly as it is designed to do."

All the riders were safely down within 19 minutes, added the Staffordshire park. However, some witnesses claim rescue efforts took between 30 and 40 minutes, says The Independent.

One passengers took to Twitter to share the experience.

"We were standing underneath it when the ride stopped and all the passengers were screaming and crying. They sounded terrified," Kate Smythe, who was at the park with her family, told The Guardian. "We were told the ride had flooded and I wonder if the electrics shorted in the rain."

Some of those affected praised staff for keeping them abreast of the situation and remaining calm.

It comes nearly a year after five people were left with serious injuries following a crash on the theme park's Smiler rollercoaster.