Amusement park regulations are state-based, and literally vary for every state in the US -
“Fifty states in the United States of America and no two inspect rides the same way. That’s wrong,” said Ken Martin, an amusement park safety consultant who has been one of the loudest critics of the nation’s patchwork of state laws. “We’re not close to being in the same book, state to state. We’re not even on the same page of the hymnal. We certainly aren’t singing in key.” [1]
"Twenty-nine deaths on amusement rides or water slides have been reported to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission since 2010, spokeswoman Patty Davis said."
To put that figure into perspective however, ~335 million people visit the 400 US amusement parks each year. [2]
So three deaths per year out of 335 million people or visitors (?), for a 0.000001% fatality rate. I'm not sure at that scale if you can get it from three down to zero no matter what you do. This water slide case is a clearly horrendous violation that should never occur. I'm going to assume that with that many parks and that many visitors, with the best case scenario of regulation, with accidents guaranteed to happen, some people will die out of 335 million visitors.
I'd think most amusement park / fair ride fatalities are due to maintenance problems.
I can see that being difficult to oversee, especially with the mobile fairs that pack up the rides and move to another town. Check a ride in one town, and maybe on the way to the next town the truck hits a big pothole and something breaks on the tilt-a-whirl.
But checking a new ride's engineering and design and construction ought to be possible, just like checking that a building is up to code.
Of course, this is self-harming Kansas, so amusement rides are probably checked by a poultry inspector, one day each month.
