While there seems to be some security when one sees the numerous restraints that roller coasters and other intense thrill rides have, these rides are not as safe as one might think. Even the greatest amount of safety and maintenance checks can’t prevent a split-second malfunction.Throughout history, a few rides have stuck out as being particularly known for causing serious injury or even resulting in death. This list includes these rides, and the unfortunate circumstances that illustrate their danger.

10 Derby Racer, Revere Beach, Massachusetts

The Derby Racer has a spotted history, beginning right when it opened in 1910. The owner of the Revere Beach theme park at the time stood up to present a lecture on amusement park safety, and in a bout of sheer irony, he fell from the one of the coaster’s cars and was killed instantly. In 1917, another fatality occurred when a passenger lost his hat on the coaster’s initial incline, and in trying to retrieve it, he fell onto the opposing track, was hit by the other car, and then dragged a total of 35 feet. The Boston Daily Globe reported that the man had broken every bone in his body, and he died later in hospital.

While the coaster was finally demolished in 1919, this wasn’t before another fatality occurred; a third rider was thrown from the train, and her family filed a Supreme Court suit in 1936 against Ocean View Amusements, who ran the coaster at the time. The coaster was replacing soon after its demolition with another bearing the same name, but the negative association proved to harm sales, and it was also demolished 10 years later.

9 Mission: Space, Disney World, Florida

Mission Space is controversial for being one of the most intense space-flight simulators accessible to the public, being connected to a centrifuge similar to that used by NASA trainees. Passengers are spun, being subject to 2.5Gs of force, twice that of gravity, in what is meant to achieve similar weightlessness to that which astronauts experience. Between the summers of 2005 and 2006, park employees had to manage 200 injuries caused by the ride, including incidents of people passing out, suffering chest pain or even suffering from irregular heartbeats.

Two people also died during that period, the first being a five-year old boy who suffered from heart failure in 2005 that was brought on by a prior heart condition. The other death took place in 2006, only ten months later, when a 49-year old woman complained of nausea and dizziness, symptoms common to prior riders.

Disney park employees examined her afterwards and believed she was stable, yet upon admission to hospital, she passed away of a brain hemorrhage. Since then, Disney has stepped up to determine how to balance their intent for the ride with its potential to be too intense. The ride currently operates under two levels; “Green Team”, and “Orange Team”, the former of which providing many of the same effects as the original ride, yet done so with much less force and pressure, and therefore fewer physical side-effects. “Orange Team” is the classic ride, and it pushes the culpability to the rider for what they feel they can handle.

8 Batman: The Ride, Six Flags Over Georgia, Georgia

This coaster itself is not for the faint of heart, reaching speeds of 80km/h and twisting riders through harrowing inverted loops and turns, and boasting an 105-foot drop. However, the inverted concept of the ride proved deadly in the spring of 2002, when a 58-year old employee was stuck in the head by the dangling leg of a 14-year old rider and later died in hospital. The girl was also taken to hospital afterwards, yet she sustained only mild injuries.

The second fatality in the ride’s history, and arguably the most catastrophic, occurred when a teenager visiting with his youth group entered the restricted area of the ride, having to scale two fences to get there. It was said that he was trying to retrieve his hat, which had fallen off. He was struck by one of the cars going full speed and was decapitated. No one in the cars, however, were injured.

7 Rough Riders, Coney Island, New York

The name Rough Riders was what initially drew attention to this ride, being the name that President Theodore Roosevelt used for his cavalry regiment. It opened in 1915, and differed from modern coasters in that each car had a ride-on driver, akin to what one might find in a modern subway train. Everything was going smoothly until the car abruptly accelerated, causing its wheels to leave the track as the whole car flipped and turned on its side. Ahead, 30 feet off the ground, was an iron railing which the passengers were then flung into.

Three people died from falling from that height, and the lone two survivors were a mother and her 4-year old son, who were able to cling to the wrecked car’s handrail. One bystander was also killed by the body of the driver falling and hitting her from above, bringing the death toll to four. The park was found not responsible for the accident, with jurors later determining that the accident was “unavoidable”.

6Verrückt Waterslide, Schlitterbahn, Kansas City

Effectively earning its name (which is German for “crazy”), Verruckt opened in July 2014, being the tallest waterslide in the world at the time, with a height of 168 feet 7 inches. Upon its initial testing there were concerns surrounding the ride’s safety, with rafts being flung into the air and reaching speeds of 70km/hr. Nonetheless, it opened to the public. In the year following its grand opening, at least thirteen riders complained of injuries from being thrown into the netting, receiving concussions or slipped and herniated discs.

The park’s manager was known to have attempted to cover these up, especially in a 2016 case where a man slipped and fell from the raft, sustaining facial injuries. The ride met its demise when Caleb Schwab, the 10-year old son of the state legislator, was killed while on the slide. After the initial descent, the force of the slide caused his raft to go airborne, and he slammed into a metal pole in the netting and was decapitated.

It was determined that the cause of this was the fact that he had been permitted to sit at the front of the ride, despite two women who were heavier than him being on the raft at the same time. The three of their combined weight was greater than the ride’s max capacity, stressing the raft. The women sustained non-fatal injuries, with one receiving a broken jaw, and the other getting stitches due to receiving facial fractures. Given the position of Schwab’s father, the case was brought to court and the park was shut down temporarily while the proceedings ensued.

The director of operations was found guilty of aggravated battery, aggravated child endangerment, involuntary manslaughter, and interference with law enforcement. It was found that despite numerous warnings about the risks posed by the ride, it was allowed to run, nonetheless. The park’s operators were acquitted on the basis of inadmissible evidence, but the ride was shut down later in 2018.

5 Fujin Raijin II, Expoland, Suita, Japan

Disaster struck on May 5th, 2007, conveniently being the same date that Children’s Day is celebrated in Japan. The seated coaster had operated for 15 years beforehand with no issues, being one of the most popular attractions at Expoland. The coaster was unique in that it was designed for riders to remain standing, and reached a top speed of 75km/h. The ride was almost over when one of the wheel axels on the car broke, causing it to lurch to the side and a woman to die due to smashing her head into the guardrail. The coaster dragged her for 300 meters before finally coming to a stop, and eighteen other riders sustained non-life-threatening injuries.

It turned out that the axel that broke hadn’t been checked or repaired in 15 years and was found on the ground below afterward. Three employees attempted to cover this fact up and ended up being found guilty of professional negligence resulting in death and injury, as well as for falsifying claims that the park conducted regular checks on the roller coaster. Their defense was that the park didn’t have enough space for repairing and dismantling the cars. The public wasn’t buying it, and ticket sales plummeted. The park was unable to recoup their reputation, and closed in 2009.

4 Big Dipper, Battersea Park, London, England

The incidents attributed to this ride have been referred to as the worst roller coaster accidents in history. Built in 1951, this wooden roller coaster experienced issues right from its launch, with the ride shutting down at one point that year as one of the empty carts derailed, knocked over a railing, and left the passengers in the other car stranded. Later, another accident would occur in which a woman left with a broken arm. The worst accident for the Big Dipper, however, was in 1972 when 31 passengers climbed aboard, only for the cart to detach from its chain at the initial incline of 15 meters.

The cart sped down the bump, and upon reaching a turn, fell from the tracks. This resulted in the death of five people: Two teenage boys and an eight-year-old girl immediately, and then two other children later in hospital. The manager of the park was tried for manslaughter, but despite the prosecutors describing the ride as a “death trap”, he ended up being acquitted on all counts. Soon after this, the Big Dipper was demolished, and the park closed its doors two years later in 1974, unable to recoup their negative reputation following the disaster.

3Cyclone, Coney Island, New York

This coaster is one of few that have a dark past, but still remain open to this day. The Cyclone is one of the more iconic representations of Coney Island, having been named a New York landmark in 1988. The coaster first launched in 1927, but its first fatality didn’t occur until 1985, where a 29-year-old man decided to stand up in the middle of the ride and smashed his head on a support crossbeam. He died instantly. The next year, one of the maintenance workers was on break when he decided to ride the coaster. He chose not to fasten the restraining belt, and stood up on the ride’s incline, despite being warned of the danger beforehand.

On the downhill, he fell from the cart, landed on one of the support crossbeams (much like the earlier fellow) and died. From then on there were no accidents on the Cyclone until 2007, when a 53-year-old man rode the coaster, and cracked the vertebrae in his neck due to the force of the decline. He was admitted to hospital but died from complications in relation to the surgery. Despite these incidents, all inquiries have proven the coaster to be a safe ride, and the coaster remains to be one of the defining symbols of Coney Island.

2 Mindbender, Fantasyland, Edmonton, Alberta

This is the only indoor coaster on the list, with this high-speed triple loop coaster being the largest of its kind in the world. For years, ironically, it was touted as the “world’s safest coaster”, yet things went awry in 1986, only one day after an inspection deemed the ride to be safe. It was believed that there was an issue with the final car’s wheels, as it began to sway after completing one of the loops. Bystanders watched in awe and horror as the cart derailed from the track to strike a concrete pillar. The incident happened to occur when a concert was taking place right underneath the coaster.

Three people were killed in the crash, a male and two females, and another suffered critical injuries. 19 others also experienced minor injuries and shock. Afterwards, it was found that indeed, four bolts on one of the coaster’s back wheels had come loose, and caused the accident. Over a six-month period, rigorous testing and maintenance was done to the coaster to allow it to open once more and proceed in a safe manner. Seatbelts, headrests, and anti-rollback mechanisms were installed, and the number of cars was reduced. The coaster re-opened the following year, and has been running smoothly, but more importantly, safely ever since.

1Puff the Little Fire Dragon, Lagoon, Utah

This final incident shows that rides don’t need to be overly intense or strenuous to be deadly. The coaster in question is Puff the Little Fire Dragon at Lagoon in Utah, a small children’s coaster with nothing more than a few bumps in the track. Tragedy struck in 1989 when a six-year-old boy named Ryan Beckstead mistakenly tried to unbuckle his seatbelt after one lap, thinking the ride was over, when in reality, the ride goes around multiple times. He fell from the car, and became trapped beneath the ride’s tracks. When the ride came back around after completing a lap, the car struck him in the head, killing him.

His father, who was watching from the sidelines, could only stand, helpless, which his son met his fate. During the investigation, attorneys found no reason to file criminal charges against the ride operator or Lagoon Corp. The girl operating the ride had tried her best to pull the brakes, but due to its nature and reliance on gravity, the ride failed to stop in time. We found no criminal negligence on the part of either Lagoon or the operator,”, said police when questioned. This was the first and only time a coaster of this form had resulted in a fatality, and the first time that a park with this coaster has sought out further safety enhancement. It goes to show you never can tell when horrific circumstances such as this might occur.

The traveling carnival, often known simply as a carnival, is largely held by historians to have originated from the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Carnivals developed a bad reputation from their outset, which continued long after. This was due to two things: The “unsavory diversions” that carnivals offered, such as “freak shows, games of chance, and burlesque,” and the frequently dishonest and scandalous business practices of workers, which included operating “rigged games” and bogus exhibits, exhibiting nude or “scantily clad women,” bribing local authorities, and fighting their local customers, or “clems.”

Despite this notoriety, carnivals were popular, a large part of their attraction being due to the rides they offered, many of the more popular ones that appear on this list. One is actually older than the origin of the carnival itself, and most were invented or further developed during the first half of the twentieth century.

Here are the intriguing origins of 10 popular carnival rides.

Related: Top 10 Deadliest Rides in the World

10 Roller Coaster

The precursor to the modern roller coaster was Russia’s ice slides: 600-foot-long (183-meter) ramps that sleds would rush down, full of riders who had climbed a 70-foot-tall (21-meter) tower for the privilege of taking the thrilling ride. At the end of the ride, the passengers would ride “down a parallel slide,” which would return them to the original starting point.

In 1784, Catherine the Great transformed this wintry pursuit into an all-year pastime when, by her orders, wheels and grooved tracks were added to the coasters so they could be ridden at her palace even during summer.

The French added another innovation to the ride in 1817 when Belleville Mountain in Paris became the first slide to lock cars onto tracks by their wheel axles. A third improvement was the introduction, by the city’s Aerial Walks, of “a system for pulling the cars back up for” additional rides.^[1]

9 Carousel

Thomas Bradshaw invented the first steam-powered carousel in 1861. The carousel itself is much older. The original merry-go-round, as the ride is also known, was built of wood. The horses that passengers rode were motionless, except, that is, for the live ones that powered the ride’s circular platform when people weren’t used for this purpose.

Frederick Savage’s “galloping mechanism” was introduced in 1870. It was an innovation to Bradshaw’s invention, in which the steam engine turned a drive shaft with a cog at the end of it. The cog then turned “an angled bevel gear fixed to an upright pole,” which moved “a ring gear in the canopy,” causing the carousel to spin around.

Savage also added a gear and offset the crank mechanism to the steam-powered horses, making them rise and fall at different times. Another innovation, also by Savage, resulted in the horses hanging at various heights. Finally, a related innovation, the pole’s extension through a hole in the platform, allowed the poles to move a little forward as the ride went faster.^[2]

8 Ferris Wheel

The Ferris wheel was created to represent American engineering at the 1893 World’s Fair. The ride, named for its inventor and builder, George Washington Gale Ferris, an engineer, was built on the principle of the bicycle wheel, with the “lower half suspended from the axle by the spoke rods running downward,” while the upper half of the wheel is supported by the lower half. The only difference is that the Ferris wheel “hangs by its axle, while a bicycle wheel rests on the ground with the weight applied downward on the axle.”

Ferris’s design gave great stability to his invention, which weighed 1,200 tons (1088 metric tons). Its safety was demonstrated by Ferris himself, who rode to the top of the wheel during a severe storm accompanied by winds of 100 miles per hour (161 km/h). Fifty cents was charged to ride the wheel, which was a hit from the moment it debuted, with riders declaring that they wouldn’t “take ten dollars for their experience.”^[3]

7 The Witching Waves

Jeffrey Stanton explains the origin of the Witching Waves ride in his article concerning Coney Island’s independent rides. At the outset of the automobile age, he says, people wanted to ride inside automobiles or even drive them, and it was to this intense desire that the Witching Waves catered.

The ride, invented in 1907 by Theophilus Van Kannel, first became available to the public at Coney Island three years later. The ride is a large oval course consisting of a flexible, stationary metal floor beneath which “hidden reciprocating levers” produce “a wave-like motion” that propels cars steered by their riders.

Actors ride the Witching Waves in the 1917 film Fatty in Coney Island, starring Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton. Improbable antics ensue as the cars travel erratically, collide with one another, crash into an obstacle on the track, spill passengers, and make one rider nauseous.^[4]

6 The Whip

W.F. Mangrels was a manufacturer of carousels and other carnival rides, notably for those at Coney Island. In 1914, he invented the Whip, an open, horse-shoe-shaped car with a rounded front in which one to three passengers ride on a bench-style seat, a safety bar before them, as the cars follow a circular track while the arms attached to the cars periodically “whip” them back and forth.

Several Whip rides are still in use today, including the one at Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom in Allentown, Pennsylvania, manufactured in 1918, and Kennywood Park in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, manufactured in 1926. Manufacturers continued to make several versions throughout the years; however, they are no longer in production.^[5]

5 Bumper Cars

Early in the 1920s, Max Stoehrer and his son Harold were granted a patent for an “Amusement Apparatus” that would eventually become their Dodgem cars after the inventors equipped the cars with “novel instrumentalities” that made it difficult to control with certainty by causing the vehicles to follow an irregular, undefined path and collide with other cars.

In effect, Stoehrer and his son offered riders the thrill of being in a series of safe car crashes. In partnership with Ralph Pratt, Stoehrer started a company to build a floor and roof for customers upon and under which to operate the cars they bought, adding improvements to their vehicles as they received additional patents in 1920, 1921, and 1923.^[6]

4 Tilt-a-Whirl

“A devilish contraption.” That’s how Richard Kautz, the author of The Science of Predictable Random Motion, describes Herbert Sellner’s 1926 invention, the Tilt-a-Whirl. In the ride, each of the cars is mounted on its own circular platform that moves evenly along a circular track with three identical hills.

Boring? The ride might be, Kautz concedes, if the cars were “rigidly attached to the platforms” rather than being “free to rotate about a central pivot point that allows chaos to creep into the machine.” As a result of this innovation, riders are whirled clockwise and then counterclockwise and reverse directions randomly, keeping passengers in suspense as to what will happen next and wishing they’d passed on having eaten a hot dog before boarding.^[7]

3 Bumper Boats

In a November 1997 article for Automobile Magazine, Seth Gussow brought readers up to speed on the 1930s origin of bumper boats. Not surprisingly, they were inspired by the Stoehrers’ bumper cars and were successful for a similar reason. As the Dodgem car had given many a first opportunity to “get behind the wheel of a car,” the boats gave many their first chance to operate a powerboat.

A partnership between the Dodgem Corporation and the Lusse Company operated like Pratt and Stoehrer in selling bumper cars. Two buildings valued at $27,500 were to be put up and mortgaged to the Philadelphia Toboggan Company PTC, and Dodgem was to supply fifty cars valued at $20,000. For the boat ride, PTC was apparently responsible for constructing a channel. Like the bumper cars, the bumper boats proved a smashing success.^[8]

2 Rotor

Owned and operated by its inventor, Ernst W. Hoffmeister, of Hamburg, Germany, the Rotor was built by Anton Schwarzkopf and debuted in 1955. According to Amusement Park Extravaganza, in the United States, due to a patent disagreement among the ride’s makers and operators, the Velare Brothers were assigned the rights to build portable Rotors.” The Anglo Rotor Corporation was assigned the rights to stationary models.

The ride uses centrifugal force to pin its occupants to the outsides of its wooden cylinder until the Rotor reaches its optimal speed. At this point, passengers are safely stuck to the wall, and the ride’s operator lowers the floor, leaving riders high up the wall. As the ride ends, the cylinder gradually slows to a stop, and riders slowly slide down the wall to land on the lowered floor.

The invention of the Rotor was part of the broader trend in the mid-20th century to develop new and thrilling amusement rides that would attract visitors with novel and intense experiences. The Rotor became popular for its ability to provide a thrilling ride experience that was different from traditional roller coasters and other amusement park attractions. Various versions are still found in carnivals today, under several names, including the Round-Up and the Gravitron.^[9]

1 Bounce House

Inspired by the inflatable tent covers he designed for tennis courts, American engineer John Scurlock, who was employed by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration and taught at Tulane University, invented the inflatable tent design of the bounce house in 1958. While working on the court covers, he noticed his employees enjoyed jumping on the inflated surfaces. This observation inspired him to create an inflatable play structure specifically designed for jumping and bouncing.

Scurlock’s invention aimed to provide a unique and entertaining way for children to play and expend energy. Bounce houses quickly became popular at parties, fairs, and amusement parks, offering a safe environment where children could enjoy physical activity.

The safety of subsequent versions of his original design, created by others, was investigated after a Little Tikes Jump n’ Slide went airborne, reaching an altitude of 50 feet (15 meters) during high winds and injuring two children who “toppled out,” one falling on asphalt, the other on a parked car. Heavier, more durable houses are safe, Space Walk company executives say.

The Mayo Clinic, however, states that each year, children sustain injuries on trampolines and in bounce houses ranging from sprains and broken bones to traumatic head and neck injuries. It recommends a number of actions to prevent injuries, including supervising bounce house use at all times, allowing use only by children of the same size and age, ensuring that the bounce house is securely attached to the ground, and refraining from using a bounce house during high winds and storms.^[10]