Also has parallels with that decapitation incident in the US where it suddenly becomes clear that no one other than the owners and operators are required to self certify the rides. No problem there then....
I met a mechanical engineer once who had written the first guidelines in Australia for checking these rides. Possibly they became a national standard - not sure. The guidelines were done in a hurry after some incident and were based on instinct mostly. Completely unregulated and somehow escaping WHS notice. Probably just too hard as many travel constantly to fairs and are cash businesses.
Articles keep saying a cable broke. I don't see any cables on the ride before/during failure but there could be a cable lying on the ground in the after failure shots. Were there cables helping to support it?
I think the cable thing is a red herring. the ride is clearly working normally gradually speeding up then simply broke.
It looks like the shaft was bolted onto the main cetral point, but seems to have broken above the flanged joint if you look at the two photos below, the break point seems to be well above the colourful collar.
the "reinforcement" of the flanged joint looks rather odd to me - I wonder if there was some previous damage or the designer recognized that the joint was under a lot of moment.
Reasonable hi res image before the accident
The break point in lower res video still
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Lots of stress reversal and fatigue potential on that joint and repetitive acceleration changes. Would the loads be similar to an impact load of some factor (2x, 3x?) gravity?
Yes. Looks like the stiffened bulb remained intact, and it failed just beyond that. Makes sense. Sudden change of shape, with lots of potential stress concentrations and fatigue points.
