Six Flags Roller Coaster Deaths, and the Warning Signs Missed

Last week, a man on the Goliath roller coaster at Six Flags Over Georgia died when he was ejected from the ride — a death that follows a pattern of apparent safety incidents on Six Flags roller coasters nationwide. A recent CNN investigation into Six Flags Magic Mountain, located just north of Los Angeles in Valencia, exposed serious safety concerns surrounding X2, one of the park’s most popular roller coasters. Over its nearly two-decade run, the ride has been linked to more than a dozen severe hospitalizations and two deaths, including riders who suffered severe brain hemorrhages. Six Flags officials have since closed the coaster — plus 10 others related to the subsequent Goliath incident. We’ll speak with a CNN reporter who broke the X2 story, and look at why apparently dangerous rides weren’t shut down sooner.

Guests:

• Kyung Lah, senior national correspondent, CNN
• Dr. Nitin Agarwal, associate professor of neurological surgery at the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute, West Virginia University School of Medicine, acting chief and education director, neurological surgery, Veteran Affairs Pittsburgh Healthcare System
• Dr. Calvin Kuo, assistant professor, School of Biomedical Engineering, The University of British Columbia
• Christopher Bulone, partner at the Dordick Law Corporation

This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.

Mina Kim: Welcome to Forum. I’m Mina Kim. Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia permanently closed its popular X2 roller coaster last month after a CNN investigation found the ride was linked to two deaths and dozens of injuries, including brain hemorrhages. Weeks later, a man died in Georgia after being thrown from the Goliath roller coaster, prompting Six Flags to briefly close similar rides across the country, including in California. The incidents are raising questions about the safety and regulation of roller coasters, which millions of Americans ride each year for the thrill, the rush, and the bragging rights.

Joining me now is Kyung Lah, senior national correspondent for CNN based in Los Angeles, who investigated safety concerns with Six Flags’ X2. Kyung, welcome to Forum.

Kyung Lah: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Mina Kim: Yeah, I really appreciate you being with us, too. So, I’m curious what went through your mind last week when you learned a man had died riding a different roller coaster at Six Flags in Georgia, with this coming right on the heels of your own investigation into X2.

Kyung Lah: Well, it was just crushingly sad. I think it’s really important to remember that the people who go to these theme parks, you’re doing it for fun, a lot of times with your family, your kids. Um, and this person who died on this ride is, you know, someone who went for that exact reason. He’s a cherished teacher and robotics coach. So it’s just tragic and sad.

And so what we weren’t really sure about is how, because this is a completely different ride than what we focused on. We focused on Six Flags Magic Mountain, looking at some of the patterns of injuries that were brought to our attention. And what we did is we then dug into further public documents. We took a national look at what we could gather together after what happened in Georgia. And by digging through more documents, we found more information. And we don’t know what happened. But what we can report to you is that there are certain patterns that we’ve been able to find.

Mina Kim: Yeah, it’s still being investigated. State officials are investigating. Before we go deeper into what you found at X2, I’m just curious what you make of Six Flags’ decision to shut down the Goliath and similar rides across the country, including here, because I wouldn’t be surprised if the increased scrutiny from your reporting on X2 may be a part of it.

Kyung Lah: Well, certainly our reporting at least brought it to the public’s attention, which is what we hope to do as journalists — to make people aware that when they go to anything, whether it be, you know, on your street or in your government, we want to make people aware of what’s happening around them.

And so it’s a little difficult to know what exactly prompted it, to take this sort of broad move. But what we can tell you is that in our reporting, we were able to focus on the X2, and then there was a lot of attention this summer due to our investigation, and then this happened. And so Six Flags decided to take the move. What we have heard in this statement is that the park does have a comprehensive safety program. That’s what they told us, built on rigorous inspections for each ride, and that it’s still conducting its own review of the incident.

Mina Kim: Yeah. So, in your investigation, you and your colleagues found severe injuries, even deaths, linked to the X2 coaster, which Six Flags Magic Mountain permanently closed last month. But I’m curious what prompted you to look into this.

Kyung Lah: So, I live in Southern California. I don’t actually live that far away from this park. I’ve never been on the X2 ride. And one of my reporting partners, Melanie Hicken — Blake Ellis also was one of our reporting partners — it came to our attention that there were two women who were injured the first week of July, six days apart. They both went to the same hospital.

And what was really extraordinary was their injuries. After getting off that ride, both of them experienced the same sort of physical reactions. They both were rushed to the same hospital, and the injuries happened just six days apart. And so, because of that, we started digging. And in looking at publicly available documents, we simply found that there were other cases. And it was truly extraordinary when you dug through what was publicly available and that just simply hadn’t been put together. And that’s what we did.

Mina Kim: So, one of the women was Pamela Gillen. What did Pamela Gillen experience after the ride? It sounds like she lost consciousness pretty quickly. This was —

Kyung Lah: Because she says that she doesn’t truly remember everything that happened. She remembers getting jostled on the ride. Her daughter was celebrating her 16th birthday on July 5 when they went together. They both got in the X2. And when Camille, her daughter, got off, she noticed that her mother just looked lifeless, that there wasn’t a thought behind her eyes. And they discovered — they pulled her off the ride. And then medics started to understand that something was terribly, terribly wrong.

An ambulance rushed Pam to the hospital, and surgeons shocked her family because they discovered what’s called an acute subdural hematoma. That’s essentially a brain bleed. And she was rushed into emergency surgery. A woman, 39 years old at the time that she got on that roller coaster — by the time she got off, surgeons had to cut her skull open in emergency surgery to try to relieve that pressure on her brain.

Mina Kim: What was Naomi’s outcome, Naomi Greer-Wilkinson?

Kyung Lah: Let’s start with what her parents said, because I want to make sure that people understand the timeline. So Pam Gillen gets off the X2 ride, she goes into emergency surgery, the ride keeps going. Six days later, Naomi Greer-Wilkinson gets onto the X2 ride, unaware of what had happened to another woman just six days previous. That is according to her family, and we know that when Naomi got off that ride, she, too, was not able to walk. Something was wrong with her, and her parents believed that it was the jarring that had damaged her brain. She, too, was taken to the exact same hospital and had to go into emergency brain surgery.

She, too, had a severe brain bleed, and her mother tells us that she remembers one of the surgeons storming through the emergency room yelling, “How many is it this month? They’ve got to shut that ride down.”

Mina Kim: Wow. And I understand that Naomi remains in critical condition in a coma. We actually had our producer, Jared, speak with the lawyer representing Naomi’s family, Christopher Bulone. He wasn’t able to join us on air, but here’s how he described Naomi’s condition.

Christopher Bulone: There’s basically just enough response from Naomi on a ventilator to see that she’s still in there somewhere, that there’s some level of awareness, some level of understanding at 25 years old. What’s apparent is that she is not close to being able to speak or being able to interact with her environment, really, but that she’s alert enough to experience pain.

Mina Kim: I want to invite listeners to join the conversation. Listeners, is what you’re hearing making you rethink riding roller coasters, or do you remain a dedicated thrill seeker? What questions do you have about roller coaster safety? Do you think roller coasters, especially modern ones, are getting too extreme? Have you ever been injured from a roller coaster ride?

The email address is [email protected]. Find us on Discord, Bluesky, Facebook, or Instagram at KQED Forum. Or call us at 866-733-6786. 866-733-6786.

We’re talking with Kyung Lah, senior national correspondent for CNN based in Los Angeles. Her investigation is called “They Braved a World Famous Six Flags Roller Coaster. Then They Were Rushed to the Hospital for Emergency Brain Surgery.”

Kyung, tell us about the X2. It’s been called an extreme ride, a 4D experience. What does all that mean?

Kyung Lah: If you look at — and this video is available on YouTube — and I am not one to get motion sick, but when you look at the front-facing car of X2, it is astonishing. This is not the roller coaster, at least, I grew up with, you know, one of those with the bar across your lap, maybe a harness over your shoulders. This is something you sit in, where your legs are almost free-flowing and you’re seated. The seats spin 360 degrees forwards and backwards, and they’re independent around the track. You plummet at 200 feet at speeds up to 76 miles per hour. And the thing that will really make your stomach go, “Whoa,” are these raven turns. They’re half loops that turn into sheer drops.

And it is a thrill. If you look on Reddit and you look at some of the roller coaster forums, people love the X2, but it does shake you. And you see a lot of that in the discussions on the forums.

Mina Kim: Douglas on Discord writes, “I think we’ve unfortunately reached the limit of what roller coasters are capable of to give humans the biggest possible thrill while still being safe, especially in the modern era of maximizing profit, which usually means maintenance budgets get cut along the way.”

Did that cross your mind? Have we reached the limit of what is safe for humans to experience on a roller coaster when you were doing this, Kyung?

Kyung Lah: One thing to really keep in mind is that theme park-related accidents are really rare. There’s an industry report we found that showed there were roughly 1,500 injuries in 2024. You compare that with how many people get on roller coasters, and a lot of those injuries were classified as being related to guest behavior or medical conditions. About 25 percent were caused by technical or operational issues, like mechanical problems with a ride or operator error.

But what we had to do is, of course, look at what was happening to the company. Why are we seeing certain patterns? The pattern we saw with these two women, when we expanded it out, there were up to a hundred that we found. It is something to note that there was a merger between Six Flags and a competitor, Cedar Fair. That merger happened in 2024. And Six Flags, according to its own financial statements from recent years, has struggled financially because of weak attendance and some crushing debt. So some of that is something that the documents show Six Flags was going through as these injuries were occurring.

Mina Kim: Yeah, and as you noted, these types of rides are sort of the marquee rides. They’re the ones that draw consumers and can help maximize profit. We’re talking about the X2 and CNN’s investigation into it. It closed permanently last month, and we’re looking at why. More after the break.

I’m Mina Kim. You’re listening to Forum. I’m Mina Kim. After a man was thrown from a roller coaster at Six Flags in Georgia last week, the company closed similar rides at parks across the country, including in Valencia. This was less than a month after Magic Mountain in Valencia announced the closure of its popular X2 roller coaster, which has been linked to two deaths and dozens of injuries, including traumatic brain hemorrhages.

Things I learned from reading Kyung Lah and her colleagues’ investigation. Kyung is senior national correspondent at CNN.

Listeners, join the conversation with your questions about roller coaster safety, whether what you’re hearing is making you rethink riding roller coasters, or if you have ever had an injury on a ride or know of someone who did. You can email [email protected], find us on Discord, Bluesky, Facebook, or Instagram at KQED Forum, or call us at 866-733-6786, 866-733-6786.

And let me go to caller Christine from Connecticut. Hi, Christine, you’re on.

Christine: Hi there.

Mina Kim: Hi, what’s on your mind?

Christine: I wanted to share a story of my sister, who got a minor injury two separate times on the exact same ride at a Six Flags. The first was in New Jersey, and the second time was in New England, in western Massachusetts. I think the ride was a Spider-Man ride, and in both instances, her jaw was permanently, like, locked in an open position, and she had to go to an ER to have it popped back into place.

Mina Kim: Wow, Christine. Well, I hope your sister’s okay, but thanks for sharing that story. I should note, we reached out to Six Flags as well for a response to your reporting about injuries on their roller coasters, Kyung. And this is what they said, something sort of similar to what you described earlier. Sue Gordon from Six Flags wrote:

“Safety is our ethos and is at the heart of everything we do at Six Flags. Every ride undergoes documented safety inspections before opening each day,” supported by comprehensive maintenance programs designed to meet or exceed industry safety guidelines. “We are aware of allegations made in pending X2 litigation and take them seriously. The allegations are being carefully reviewed, and the company will respond appropriately through the litigation process.”

There is a sense that a lot of people who ride roller coasters have that safety on roller coasters would be a high priority for the companies, because any kind of injury or death would be very bad for them. But who is supposed to oversee and make sure that these safety inspections and so on are happening, that the maintenance program, as Six Flags described, is exceeding industry safety guidelines?

Kyung Lah: Well, in the state of California, it is Cal/OSHA. It is the Occupational Safety and Health — oh my goodness, we call it OSHA. I’ve shorthanded it, excuse me. They oversee the theme parks. And what we have found is, even in talking to the lawyers, they’re not necessarily focusing on the state, in part because there is a belief that the state does not have enough inspectors, that the technology has exceeded what the standards of the state are, and that the overall belief of what is acceptable, what the oversight is — that there’s nothing that’s standard.

So that is where I think there are a lot of questions. Essentially, Six Flags is, in some places of this country, regulating itself. And so Cal/OSHA did not sit down for an interview, did not respond to our questions, and we just don’t have an answer for you.

Mina Kim: Yeah. Actually, Christopher Bulone told Jared something very similar with regard to, I guess, the limits of Cal/OSHA’s ability to really determine whether a roller coaster is safe. Let’s hear it.

Christopher Bulone: And I think the big part of the problem is Six Flags probably hasn’t been telling them the whole truth. I think Six Flags has been leaning on — I know that they’ve been leaning on this idea that the X2 passed inspection, and that because it passed some ANSI inspection, that meant that it was safe. The problem was that they’re relying on inspections for the ride that don’t test for the type of unique forces that are involved in this particular roller coaster, it being a kind of an almost one-of-a-kind type of roller coaster.

Mina Kim: So Cal/OSHA is supposed to, you know, I guess, inspect these permanent rides on an annual basis, but it sounds like it’s sort of over their heads with regard to what they are supposed to understand about them and test for.

Kyung Lah: The question I would have for — and thank you, Google — the Occupational Safety and Health Division in the state of California. What I would want to know is, there was a death. Christopher Hawley, 22-year-old Christopher Hawley, died on the X2, and the ride was allowed to reopen after a brief closure.

Mina Kim: And this was in 2022, right?

Kyung Lah: Yes. And then you had the injury of Pam Gillen, and it was allowed to continue. So my question would be, perhaps the technology may have exceeded what the state would understand or regulate, but if there is this pattern, it seems like a natural thing for the state to question why, to ask why.

Mina Kim: Yeah, and the other thing that I noticed is that you were wanting to ask Cal/OSHA and also tried to ask Six Flags if the incidents of these injuries had been reported by Six Flags to Cal/OSHA. What did they say?

Kyung Lah: We didn’t hear from Cal/OSHA. You know, we asked that specific question. They would not respond about the history or say how it was allowed to reopen.

Mina Kim: And did Six Flags say anything about whether or not they had reported, say, for example, Pam Gillen’s incident?

Kyung Lah: Yeah, they didn’t answer our specific questions. We had to actually dig into court filings to find out what their defense of reopening some of these rides was. And what we found is that in those previous court filings, Six Flags did state through lawyers that it went through those daily inspections and that normal riders would not [suffer a] traumatic brain injury.

Mina Kim: Mr. Matthew writes, “A friend of mine accompanied his friend and her baby on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland in the ’90s. And there was a bad accident, a sudden braking that threw patrons from their cars, causing several injuries. Everyone was shuffled to separate rooms where they were offered NDAs in exchange for cash and Disney swag. Almost everyone signed away their right to sue or even speak of the incident. I wonder how many injuries are handled this way so that the public and authorities have no idea of the scope and frequency of the incidents.”

Do you know if Magic Mountain reached out to, say, for example, Pam or Naomi’s families?

Kyung Lah: From the viewpoint — what we have heard from both Pam and Naomi’s families is there was a representative who did show up at the emergency room, provided the family and offered them fast food, and that was the last that they heard from them. And then they reached out to a lawyer.

The lawsuits that we found and dug through through a public records request — we have noticed a pattern that multiple lawsuits settled before going to trial, and that includes a wrongful death suit of 22-year-old Christopher Hawley. So a lot of times, if you settle a lawsuit, then it doesn’t come out into the public viewpoint of why Six Flags would potentially have to pay some type of damages.

Mina Kim: What’s been the reaction to your reporting since your investigation came out?

Kyung Lah: I could tell you from my kids’ viewpoint — the teenage children, one of whom likes roller coasters and has not been on the X2, said that kids are furious. “I’m the roller coaster killer at their high school.” But what I think is important to note is that there was a lot of interest about this among youth, because young people may not be paying attention to what a lawsuit says or what the state does or doesn’t do. They just know if the ride’s open. The assumption from a young person’s point of view is that it’s safe.

So there has been a considerable amount of interest, and I found that to be really encouraging, because we want to reach the people who are going to get on these rides.

Mina Kim: Sounds like a lot of people also reached out to Christopher Bulone and other attorneys at his firm.

Kyung Lah: They had a news conference after our first investigation published, and they had 100 people alleging some type of traumatic brain incident. We don’t know the extent of their injuries. We haven’t been privy to any of them except for one additional man who I interviewed. And those 100, according to the law firm, they say, meet California’s statute of limitations, where they could potentially file a lawsuit against Six Flags.

But what I found to be really fascinating is that the law firm says they had a total of 300 reach-outs, people alleging all sorts of different injuries from this one specific ride, but the other 200 didn’t necessarily meet California’s statute of limitations and weren’t able to file some type of lawsuit.

Mina Kim: Well, let me go to caller Iyer in Oakland. Iyer, you’re on. Go ahead.

Iyer: Yeah, I was calling because, well, hearing that this ride closed last month made me remember that the first and only time I was at Magic Mountain, I was about 20, and X2 is the first ride that I did that day. I had my arms up in the thing, and on one of the turns, it tweaked something in my back, which caused, like, a lot of pain and walking around funny the whole day. And I’ve ridden a lot of roller coasters throughout my life, but the only time I ever got hurt was on X2. And it wasn’t serious. It wasn’t something to go to the doctor over, just something notable in my brain from a while ago.

Mina Kim: Well, I’m glad it wasn’t serious, but thank you so much for sharing that. Let me go next to Posey in San Francisco. Posey, go ahead. You’re on.

Posey: Hey, thank you. I am a terrifying ride addict. Maybe this will change me a little bit, but I want to comment. A few years ago, I was in New York with my mom, where she’s from, and we went to Coney Island and I rode that old, old roller coaster. And in its way, I found it more terrifying. It’s so old and rickety, and it’s not enclosed, and it almost feels like it could fall off the track. And we were in the front car, and it was really, really, really scary. It was amazing.

So, I don’t know if there’ve ever been accidents on that, but I loved it, and it was terrifying. And I’m also a Forum addict. Thank you.

Mina Kim: Well, Posey, thanks for sharing that. And that’s really what it’s about, as you were saying just at the very beginning, Kyung. People go on these rides to be able to have that thrill, right? That adrenaline rush, that sense of safe danger, never expecting that they could come off of it with a traumatic brain injury.

Kyung Lah: Certainly not. There is a public expectation that when you get on any sort of amusement park ride, you will get off and be okay. That’s a basic sense. It doesn’t matter if there’s a sign that is posted to warn you that you may get jostled or, you know, there are some signs up around Six Flags, around the bigger thrill rides. But there is a general public expectation of safety.

Mina Kim: We’re talking with Kyung Lah, senior national correspondent at CNN based in LA, who looked into the history of deaths and injuries linked to Magic Mountain’s X2 ride, which has now shut down. It’s been permanently closed as of last month.

And you, listeners, join the conversation with your questions about why, and whether what you’re hearing is making you rethink riding roller coasters, or do you remain a dedicated thrill seeker? Have you ever had an injury on a ride? Do you worry about roller coasters getting too extreme? And what questions do you have about potential injuries? 866-733-6786. Discord, Bluesky, Facebook, or Instagram are our social channels, where you can find us at KQED Forum, and you can email [email protected].

I do want to bring into the conversation Dr. Calvin Kuo, assistant professor at the School of Biomedical Engineering at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Kuo, thanks so much for joining us.

Dr. Calvin Kuo: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Mina Kim: Talk to us about the experiment that you did to look at what the brain is doing on a roller coaster.

Dr. Calvin Kuo: Yeah, this was some time ago, I think in 2017 or something like that. But we work with a kind of wearable device to monitor motion, essentially. And we’ve used these devices to essentially measure how the head responds in contact sports, like American football and soccer headers. But we were curious about essentially what’s going on on a roller coaster. So we had a few folks, or a couple of folks, wear these devices on their heads, and we went to a theme park to ride a few of these roller coasters to see actually what’s going on with the head while folks are on these rides.

And then, once we understood those motions, we used these computational models to essentially try and understand what those motions do to the brain itself, and to model how the brain kind of twists and turns and stretches inside the skull.

Mina Kim: So that is what the brain is doing, huh? It’s twisting and turning. It’s sort of shaking in the skull during the — right?

Dr. Calvin Kuo: Yeah. So the brain is quite soft. You know, a lot of people equate it to Jell-O. So when you have — when your head undergoes a lot of these motions, the brain does as you would a plate of Jell-O: kind of jostle around. That is effectively what the brain is also doing.

Mina Kim: And so where and what kinds of injuries did you find, or areas where the brain was being affected by all of this?

Dr. Calvin Kuo: Yeah, so thankfully, we didn’t see any injuries in our participants. And to be clear, a lot of the rides we went on — we did compare a lot of the observed findings with a lot of the sports research that we do in understanding how this compares to, like, a soccer header or an American football contact hit.

In general, these roller coaster rides didn’t produce motions that are any larger than any of those kinds of things you’d expect in contact sports. But we did observe that they are comparable. So what we saw happening to the brain was comparable to essentially heading a soccer ball. And a lot of these — where there’s the most kind of deformation or jostling of the brain — really is happening towards the periphery, on the surface, which is where we expect to see these kinds of bridging veins and things like that, that are consistent essentially with subdural hematomas.

Mina Kim: We were hearing from Posey that Posey was on sort of an older wooden ride. Are older roller coasters better than the modern ones we’re seeing today?

Dr. Calvin Kuo: Yeah, it’s an interesting question. I don’t know, but I think from our observations, a lot of what I think is going on is it really has to do more with the kind of aggressive jostling of the body on these roller coaster rides that really kind of whips the head back and forth. So if a roller coaster is smooth and going through these, you know, kind of high maneuvers smoothly, I actually suspect that’s not going to be quite as bad as really getting jostled and shaken around.

I think I spoke to your producer. I mentioned there are some similarities here to things like shaken baby syndrome, where we know you aggressively shake a baby and that can lead to similar kinds of traumatic brain injuries. And it’s really that aggressive jostling that is potentially problematic.

Mina Kim: Yeah. So one should really consider the jostling, maybe then more than, like, the dip, if the dip is very smooth, or the length of time when you’re going at a very high speed, Dr. Kuo.

Dr. Calvin Kuo: Yeah, that’s what I think. But of course, you know, there’s a lot more that needs to be done to actually measure and understand what’s really going on to the head in a lot of these rides.

Mina Kim: When you hear about Kyung’s description of the X2, right, where the rider is sort of free-flowing, it’s shifting 360 degrees, raven turns, very high speeds, and so on, does this sound like a recipe for brain injury?

Dr. Calvin Kuo: Yeah, so it’s interesting, because I know, you know, fighter pilots and things like that go through similar high-G maneuvers and things like that. And, you know, the mechanism behind that is a little bit different than what we see in these kinds of head traumas.

The head traumas, at least from what I work with and understand, are really caused by very fast impacts and direct head impacts and things like that. And we’re talking about your head hitting against a headrest or a side rest or something like that, that really causes those very rapid, essentially, jostling or accelerations of the head that can cause injuries. Now, what causes that jostle, right? It could be because you’re going through a very sudden change in motion through one of these raven turns or something, and that could be the cause of that jostling that then results in those head impacts.

Mina Kim: We’re talking with Dr. Calvin Kuo, assistant professor at the School of Biomedical Engineering at the University of British Columbia, and Kyung Lah, senior national correspondent at CNN, about her investigation into the X2 roller coaster, which shut down last month at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, and broader questions that it’s raising about roller coaster safety. Stay with us.

I’m Mina Kim. You’re listening to Forum. I’m Mina Kim. We’re talking this hour about how last month, Magic Mountain announced the closure of its popular X2 roller coaster, which has been linked to two deaths and dozens of injuries, including traumatic brain hemorrhages. You can learn more about this in Kyung Lah’s piece, which she co-investigated. She’s a senior national correspondent at CNN. It’s called “They Braved a World Famous Six Flags Roller Coaster. Then They Were Rushed to the Hospital for Emergency Brain Surgery.”

Listeners, join the conversation with your roller coaster experiences, your questions about roller coaster safety, and your reactions to the response by the state and Six Flags. You can direct them to Dr. Calvin Kuo, assistant professor at the School of Biomedical Engineering at the University of British Columbia, and to Kyung Lah, at 866-733-6786, at the email address [email protected], and on Discord, Bluesky, Facebook, or Instagram.

Let me go to Eileen in Kensington. Eileen, go ahead. You’re on.

Eileen: Hi. You’ve talked about OSHA, and that’s the agency authorized to inspect workplaces and to protect employees, and I think that’s irrelevant to the issue. And as the physician just talked about, it’s the forces on the brain that are the issue. So I think Cal/OSHA is just not the right agency to be inspecting roller coasters. They might be able to opine on whether the roller coaster is going to fall off the tracks, but other than that, they’re not going to have anything to determine whether the rider could possibly be injured.

Mina Kim: Eileen, thanks. That’s an interesting point, Kyung, right? I do know that there have been incidents where workers have been injured from the roller coasters as well while they are working at the theme park. But what do you think of Eileen’s point that maybe this needs to be under a —

Kyung Lah: And we were wondering the same thing when we started to figure — started to understand, or just simply ask, okay, who regulates these roller coasters? And that it’s Cal/OSHA was very surprising to us as well. This is a governmental question, right? Various agencies oversee different parts of our lives, which are often surprising in the state of California. But this was certainly something that surprised us as well.

Mina Kim: Let me go to Rob next in San Francisco. Rob, go ahead. You’re on.

Rob: Thank you. Uh, I think the biggest takeaway from this should be that the public should not trust these rides as absolutely safe. I mean, I was always under the impression, growing up and as I got older, that they wouldn’t put a ride in these parks that was not safe, but clearly that is not the case. And the public also needs to think, “Do I really want to get on this?”

I mean, my wife and I went to Disneyland about ten years ago, when our son was young, and we went on Space Mountain. I hadn’t been on a roller coaster in a long time. And when I got off, my wife and I both commented that the whole room felt like it was full of smoke because we were having this visual kind of a sting. We realized we’re too old to go on a coaster. I just couldn’t handle it physically, and it lasted for about 15 minutes, almost ruined our morning because when we got off, we were just — we were kind of traumatized. And I thought, wow, um, I think people need to think about this. And the more of a reputation these rides have for, you know, screwing the living poop out of you, um, may not be the best thing for you physically. And you don’t want to have a life-altering injury just because you wanted this thrill-seeking —

Mina Kim: Well, Rob, thanks for sharing where you’re at. I actually want to put your experience to another guest who’s joining us now, Dr. Nitin Agarwal, associate professor of neurological surgery at the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute at West Virginia University School of Medicine. Dr. Agarwal, thanks so much for joining us.

Dr. Nitin Agarwal: Thank you for having me.

Mina Kim: Rob was saying, “Maybe I’m too old to ride roller coasters anymore.” Are certain people at a higher risk of injury from a roller coaster? Are their brains at a higher risk of potential injury?

Dr. Nitin Agarwal: You know, I think that most roller coasters have warning signs about if you have prior existing neck conditions or back conditions or recent surgery, then maybe limit riding them. And as we get older, more people are prone to these types of things. So, in a sense, older people could be more prone to injury from a roller coaster.

Certainly, that thrill-seeking tendency doesn’t go away with age, so we still want to re-experience those magical moments from when we were younger, but there certainly is a risk as conditions progress.

Mina Kim: Um, you co-authored a 2025 paper that analyzed 20 years of data about neurological injuries on roller coasters from kids under 18 years old. Are kids more susceptible?

Dr. Nitin Agarwal: You know, it’s a great question. We don’t know whether kids are more susceptible or not. The reason and rationale behind the study was to see a population that, you know, does often participate in roller coaster rides.

In the study itself, we noted that older children had a little bit of higher frequency of experiencing concussions, though we’re not really sure why that was the case. One thing that is concerning for me for children in that population that we studied is especially in some children, their heads are proportionally larger and their muscles are less developed, and their spines and ligaments might be more flexible. So those anatomical differences might increase susceptibility to head and neck injuries. So it’s one reason why children are an interesting population to look at for this study.

Mina Kim: Let me go to Anya, caller Anya next in San Francisco. Anya, go ahead. You’re on.

Anya: Thank you so much. Yeah, so this is — I listen to you often, and to hear about this ride, I teach in San Francisco, but I used to teach in Los Angeles, and I’m an eighth-grade math teacher. But we get to do fun things with kids, like take them to amusement parks. And a lot of my students have never been on roller coasters before. They don’t get to go to amusement parks.

And we would take our students to Six Flags when I was teaching in LA. And they were, “Ms. Wong, please, can we get on X2? Let’s get on!” And the joy on their faces. They’re so excited, and I love roller coasters. And I said, “You guys, this is terrifying,” like, to think about how fast we’re going, how high up we were.

And then the very next ride — this was about in, I think, 2017, was the last time I took this particular field trip — the ride got stuck. And I was thinking how high we were up on that ride, where if anything were to happen, that would be terrifying. I have other people’s children, and I want my students to experience joy and to be courageous, but knowing that I was putting them in such harm is really terrifying to hear. So thank you for hearing this.

Mina Kim: Well, thank you for sharing that. I mean, I guess one thing I did see from your study, Dr. Agarwal, is that — and maybe this will help you feel a tad better — the overall injury rate, you said, was pretty low for roller coasters.

Dr. Nitin Agarwal: Yes, indeed. It’s quite a low rate of injury. You know, I think what’s more important here from the study is general awareness, and that if you have a pre-existing condition, if you have a neck or back condition, then, you know, be mindful and heed the warning signs. And more importantly, on the coaster itself, follow the restraints, keep your head back, those things, because sudden acceleration, deceleration, rapid rotational movements — that’s really when injury can strike. But if general precautions are followed, injury rates are pretty low.

Mina Kim: So you mean there are ways, if you can, to position yourself on the ride to maybe make it a little bit less likely that you will be jostled about in a way that could cause injury?

Dr. Nitin Agarwal: Indeed. I think, you know, myself, I enjoy roller coasters, and I’m always the person turning over to my loved one saying, “Keep your head back,” before it starts.

Mina Kim: Do you think that the types of messages that theme parks put — you know, warnings before you’re riding a ride — are enough? The requirement generally is just a height requirement and so on. Do those need to change?

Dr. Nitin Agarwal: You know, it’s hard for me to comment on the exact requirements to put out for each specific ride. But I think general safety of the restraints, keeping your head back, especially when you look at our study and there were injuries from your head hitting the safety bar or being jostled around or those types of things — I think most of those probably come when people do not follow the safety signs.

Mina Kim: Dr. Kuo, did you find in your study, you know, with people doing the wearables and so on, that it mattered where they sat on a roller coaster?

Dr. Calvin Kuo: Yeah, I mean, we saw a lot of variability just in the kinds of motions that were observed. So we did go on a couple of rides a couple times, just trying to intentionally sit either in the front or the back. And there are certainly some differences just from the physics of it all.

But a lot of this really just depends on, you know, as Dr. Agarwal mentioned, just kind of how much jostling there is and how well you are kind of resisting a lot of that jostling. So I do think a lot of it is kind of person-dependent in a way, right? And just trying to kind of protect yourself and physiologically kind of resist a lot of that jostling.

Mina Kim: Well, Laura writes, “I love the classic wooden coasters. I went on a newer one years ago and my body said nope. I like the smoothness and fluidity of the classic wood coaster. It still has thrills, but does not assault the body. On my mom’s 80th, we went on the Giant Dipper in Santa Cruz. We both were grinning from ear to ear.”

Casey writes, “About 12 years ago, I took my twins and some friends to Great America for a day of rides. After one particular roller coaster that had their legs free, extreme spinning, and very sudden stops, at least three out of six kids got off saying the ride always gave them a headache. I have wondered ever since how many people are getting repeated mild concussions on these newer roller coasters without knowing it.”

Sort of similarly, Deborah writes, “I’m wondering how many brain injuries are not apparent right after the ride, possibly the result of cumulative trauma, like for football players.”

Your thoughts, Dr. Agarwal, on what Deborah and Casey are remarking on with regard to the headaches and sort of maybe not readily apparent that they have been injured from a ride?

Dr. Nitin Agarwal: Yeah, so we do know that you do not need a direct impact in order to suffer a head injury or a concussion. So that is a known phenomenon, and something people should pay attention to is anybody with a prior concussion, an existing cervical spine disorder, or any condition that makes the head, neck, or associated blood vessels fragile should take additional precautions and avoid roller coasters.

And most commonly, these are things that are noted in warning signs: prior head injury, prior concussion. So, you know, that would concern me, that somebody’s having repetitive experiences like that.

Mina Kim: Let me remind listeners, you are listening to Forum. I’m Mina Kim. What signs should you look for, Dr. Agarwal, after you get off a ride that you may want to take a break or maybe even go see a doctor?

Dr. Nitin Agarwal: Just because you didn’t hit your head, I think it’s important to look for signs such as worsening headache, like you mentioned, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, any visual changes, confusion. People can have difficulty with balance or gait. Those are classical signs, hallmark signs that should prompt medical evaluation.

More concerning signs that would require rapid evaluation for me would be a sudden, severe headache or any sort of neurological deficit where someone has weakness on one side of their body or difficulty speaking. Those require immediate emergency medical attention.

Mina Kim: Is it possible that something very serious could not show up for a day or two, Dr. Agarwal?

Dr. Nitin Agarwal: You could have delayed symptoms. Someone could feel initially normal before developing symptoms over an hour or so. So I think it’s important that people know and pay attention to symptoms, even if it’s in a delayed fashion.

There are instances where you could have a tearing of a so-called bridging vein, and you could have intracranial bleeding where it might not appear immediately and then cause symptoms or signs later on. We often see that with head trauma.

Mina Kim: Let me go to caller Nancy in Richmond. Nancy, go ahead. You’re on.

Nancy: Oh, hi, thank you. Yes, several years ago, maybe 25 — I don’t remember — on a roller coaster at Disney World in Florida. And I was an adult. I’m 75 now, so I was an adult. And when I got off the ride, one of my eyes — a blood vessel had popped in one of my eyes. And I really haven’t thought about that in a long time until your program.

Other than that, I mean, I was fine. My vision was fine. I didn’t tell anyone other than the person I was with, and, you know, I didn’t have a headache or anything like that. But it was shocking to see my eye, and then it did clear up. I can’t remember how long. I mean, it wasn’t — I don’t think it was a couple of days. I mean, it did clear up. Anyway, I just wanted to share that.

Mina Kim: Well, Nancy, thanks so much for sharing that. I’m glad that it wasn’t too serious, but yes, I imagine that was quite shocking as well. You know, Dr. Kuo, we’ve been talking about age and kids and development and so on, but you also had subjects ride the same ride and have very different responses. I’m imagining they were fairly similar in age. So do you know what caused that?

Dr. Calvin Kuo: Yeah, I mean, so we only had two people, so there’s nothing definitive I can really say. But from the sports literature, there is quite a lot of work that goes into understanding what factors might influence the protective effect of the body to resist head impacts and therefore concussions.

So there has been a lot of work looking into whether things like neck strength and neck stability help with resisting impacts and resisting this jostling around, which is potentially protective. So, as Dr. Agarwal mentioned, with kids having a relatively larger head compared to the rest of their body, and their neck strength — that is known to play a role in terms of their ability to resist a lot of this jostling. And then that might lead to a strike against the headrest or just jostling in general.

Mina Kim: Well, Douglas writes, “I’ve never been injured, but I rode an older roller coaster at Six Flags called Ninja, and, man, it hurt to ride on. The coaster jostles you on the hard G-force turns. It whips your neck back and forth and generally removes almost all of the fun from the experience.”

Let me go to Ali in Oakland. Ali, go ahead. You’re on. Hi, Ali, are you there? Oh, sounds like we do not have our connection with Ali. We’ll see if we can get that back.

John writes, “Going on a roller coaster is flirting with death. What keeps people from understanding that simple fact?”

What are your thoughts about that, Dr. Agarwal? Is it flirting with that? Does the person basically have a responsibility not to go on it, and that, you know, they should not necessarily have the expectation of safety from the manufacturer or the company?

Dr. Nitin Agarwal: You know, I think that the most important thing here is to have good rider safety precautions, and individuals with brain, neck, or spine conditions should consider or reconsider riding one of these coasters. But if you don’t have a medical condition, you don’t have one of those pre-existing conditions, I think there’s some general safety around these coasters, and they’re generally safe for healthy individuals who follow the guidelines.

So, most importantly, serious injuries occur when — um, when people have, um, existing conditions or don’t follow the safety advice. And then, obviously, there’s a responsibility to investigate them and determine what additional measures could be provided.

Mina Kim: Kyung, what are you watching for moving forward with this? It sounds like Six Flags could be facing potentially a slew of lawsuits.

Kyung Lah: I am looking at that. What Christopher Bulone, the attorney you mentioned and spoke with, has said is that the anticipation is that, of the 100 additional people who’ve reached out to their law firm, they anticipate filing individual lawsuits representing those various clients because all of their injuries are so different. He doesn’t envision it becoming a class-action lawsuit, but he does envision one after another filing all of those lawsuits. Mm.

Mina Kim: And also, of course, our heart goes out to Naomi Greer-Wilkinson’s family, as she remains in a coma after riding X2 this summer. Kyung, thank you so much for your reporting on this. I really appreciate it.

Kyung Lah: Thank you for having me.

Mina Kim: Again, Kyung Lah, senior national correspondent at CNN. Also, Dr. Agarwal, associate professor of neurological surgery at West Virginia University. Thank you so much for joining us as well.

Dr. Nitin Agarwal: Thank you.

Mina Kim: Dr. Calvin Kuo, assistant professor at the School of Biomedical Engineering at the University of British Columbia. I really appreciate having you on.

Dr. Calvin Kuo: Yeah, thank you so much.

Mina Kim: And thanks always to our listeners for sharing their experiences and their questions, and to Jared Sport, who produced this segment. You’ve been listening to Forum. I’m Mina Kim. Funds for the production of Forum are provided by the Generosity Family Fund and the members of KQED.