A story was published today in Consumers Digest entitled “Waterparks: Is Public Safety Going Down the Tubes” that
paints an extremely unflattering and misleading picture of the safety of the waterpark
industry as a whole. Authored by Sara
Bongiorni, the piece makes a number of disturbing assertions to suggest that injuries
at waterparks in the United States are increasing at an alarming rate and that
the best solution to countering this trend is federal regulation of the fixed
site amusement industry. The piece takes
great issue with the so-called “patchwork” of state regulations governing the amusement
industry and even goes so far as to portray the industry as expending hundreds
of thousands of dollars per year specifically to avoid federal regulation. I’ve seen other pieces like this – usually in
the wake of a tragic accident at a park or carnival. Rarely, though, have I seen a piece that goes
to the extent that this piece does in mis-characterizing the facts and ignoring
gaping holes in the logic and reasoning underlying its conclusions. I thus feel compelled to address some of the
more troubling aspects of Ms. Bongiorni’s piece. The article though is rather lengthy, so I
thought the best way to address it was in two parts. Today, I’ll discuss the problems with Ms.
Bongiorni’s injury statistics, and how they were manipulated to paint a far direr
picture than exists in reality. In Part
2, I’ll address her contention that federal regulation is the answer to all the
industry’s problems.