The derailing of M&D’s Tsunami rollercoaster is one of the most significant ride accidents ever to have occurred in the UK.
For a train to completely derail and hit the ground is virtually unprecedented in modern times.
But while the British media tends to over hype even the most insignificant of technical blunders when it comes to rollercoasters, this accident was relatively obscure in comparison.
Newspapers and television have been engrossed in the reporting of the United Kingdom’s public vote on to leave the European Union.
Friday’s referendum result is the only event realistically imaginable of keeping the M&D’s crash from the front pages of the the British tabloids.
As three children remain in hospital with serious injuries, questions are inevitably asked as to how this could have happened.
There has been an eyewitness report where a man said that the rollercoaster’s other train behaved strangely prior to the dispatch of the derailed train.
Impact
Some photographs suggest that one of the ride’s supports has been impacted, and this correlates with the police statement which said the train impacted against the ride’s superstructure.
If somehow the train had impacted a support at considerable speed, it is possible that shear forces could have caused the detachment of the train’s wheel assemblies.
It has also emerged that the ride was subject to its annual safety inspection only last month.
However, it will be some time before the results from the Health and Safety Executive’s investigation are published.
What is undeniable however is that this incident is far more serious than the Smiler accident at Alton Towers a little over a year ago.
But the combination of both the crash’s occurrence at a much less-known theme park and an exceptional political event have resulted in the strange situation of this story barely featuring on the public’s radar.