It depends on whether the ride is located within the city limits of Las Vegas (like Slotzilla downtown and the various rides atop the Stratosphere tower) or in surrounding Clark County. In the latter instance, rides are inspected multiple times yearly – about three or four times, up from once a year in 1999 – "and there are surprise inspections throughout the year," according to Clark County Public Information Officer Dan Kulin. This falls within the purview of the Clark County Building & Fire Department, which keeps tabs on over 100 rides.
In Las Vegas, "the city does provide permitting for the amusement rides in the city, but the inspections are done by independent engineers who are experts regarding these types of rides. The city gets the inspection from these engineers and based on that report will or won’t permit a ride," according to city Public Information Officer Jace Radke.
Should Clark County inspectors find a ride not up to standards, an Out-of-Use seal is slapped on the ride and may not be removed until the ride "has been repaired, re-inspected and approved as operational." The owner of the ride has 20 days to appeal the ‘Prohibited Use Notice’ but may not operate the ride during that time. In the event of a fatality, the ride is to be closed immediately (and cannot be resumed until written permission is received from Clark County) and the operator has four hours in which to report the incident to the Building Department.
Serious injuries also have to be reported in the same time frame but the ride can continue operating. "The owner/operator has the burden to assure that the [ride] meets all requirements for a return to service prior to requesting department inspection." Transient rides, like those seen at carnivals and fairs, are the regulatory province of the state.
Ride Safety Test Engineers lead engineer Steve Pruitt told the Las Vegas Sun that "Clark County is probably the most regulated county in the country for amusement rides." No ride-related fatalities occurred, at the least, from 1977 to 1997. (The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Division does not keep statistics predating 1977.) David Collins, an inspections engineer with Los Angeles-based Team IX, agreed with Pruitt that Clark County is "one of the strongest, best-managed and best-operated ride inspection systems in the country … models for state legislation," in part because the county keeps tabs on what the rules are in other states, in case they’re locally applicable/beneficial.
In a broader context, in 1996, Las Vegas safety engineer Jeffery Abendshien told the Los Angeles Times, "The standards in our country are probably the most lax standards compared to the British, French, or German standards." However, the story still noted that Clark County was one of the few areas in the U.S. to mandate independent software inspections. The inciting incident was a test of the Desperado, at Primm Valley Resorts. A "hole in the software" was discovered, one that could have caused one set of roller coaster cars to crash into another, if the latter was stalled on the tracks ahead. It didn't happen and the glitch was fixed before any disaster could occur.
Not long after the New York-New York High Roller roller coaster opened, it needed to be shut down, in January 1997, due to the inadequacy of the tension rods that steadied the tracks. In May 1996, a tension cylinder fell off one of the 15 motors propelling the coaster and caromed off the observation deck, cracking a window. Then, in December, two wheels came off, derailing the coaster. After some prompt repairs and an inspection, it was operating again in four and a half hours.
Stratosphere has been something of an Accident Central for thrill rides. In November 2005, a power outage left half a dozen tourists hanging 866 feet above Las Vegas Boulevard after X-Scream abruptly shut down and did not "retract" its passenger load back to safety. Instead, the Japanese tourists on board were stuck hanging over the ledge of the tower, as temperatures dropped into the 50s and winds gusted at about 10 mph, for an hour and a half. "Stratosphere officials said the power outage occurred when a car crashed into a street-level electrical transformer at approximately 5:45 p.m. Two other thrill rides atop the tower were also operating at the time, but stopped without incident," reported UltimateRollercoaster.com. The ride was designed with a manual override to enable workers to rescue passengers in rare situations such as occurred that night, but a spokesman for the property at the time was at a loss to explain if the system had failed and, if not, why staff had been unable to bring the ride back to its starting position.
Earlier that year, two young women found themselves suspended over the tower’s edge when then-new Insanity went into "pause mode" at 1 a.m. due to high winds. Erica McKinnon, 18, and Gabriella Cecineros, 11, were alone on the last ride of the night when winds reaching speeds of up to 61 mph caused the spinning aerial ride to stop, leaving them stuck 64 feet from the tower's observation deck and more than 900 feet above the ground.
The ride was designed to stop in high winds and would have returned had the wind subsided, but it didn't, so workers had to manually pull the ride back in to the deck -- a feat of strength that can't have been helped by the fact that they were doing this in 61 mph wind conditions. It's no surprise it took an hour to winch the carriage back onto the platform and the whole scenario begs the question as to why the ride was allowed to operate in the first place in winds even approaching dangerous levels. Luckily, there were no injuries, but the aptly named Insanity remained closed for several days of scrutiny by inspectors before being allowed to resume operations.
Perhaps the incident served as a useful wake-up call, because we've not been aware of any other incident on any of Las Vegas' thrill rides since then, aside from back in January of this year, when a male rider mysteriously ground to an aerial halt about 100 feet after he'd been launched from the Slotzilla zipline platform on Fremont Street. He was suspended at 114 feet for almost an hour before Las Vegas firefighters retrieved him with their bucket, but they termed the incident "more of an assist than a rescue" and he reportedly returned to terra firma with a smile on his face.
