An Arizona man was captured on video jumping out of a moving roller coaster at an amusement park in Phoenix on Sunday, KNPX reports. Since it wasn’t Florida, the man was (apparently) not under the influence of alcohol or drugs and was actually jumping off in an act of self-preservation: His safety harness had failed while the train on the “Desert Storm” coaster was being cranked up to the top of its initial drop. Had the unnamed man not jumped off onto the emergency catwalk staircase with just seconds to spare before the drop, he could very well have been flung to his death on a hard turn or fallen out during one of the two upside-down loops on the large steel roller coaster’s course.
The man, who said he was there for a niece’s birthday party, was relieved it was his harness and not anyone else’s. “I think the worst part is having the kids there and knowing it could have been one of them. It shouldn’t cost your life to have fun,” the man said. He’s also extremely unhappy with park management, complaining that the operator “should have been watching that car and when she saw me climbing out she should have been able to hit an emergency release, should have been able to do something,” and that he filed a report with ownership but didn’t get a copy. “All amusement parks that basically have people lives in their hands need to be better regulated,” the man continued.
Yeah it was already kind of obvious who he voted for even before that part about regulation. It was the fact that he was sober at his niece’s birthday, was worried about kids being endangered by an actual threat to their safety, and demonstrated independent, critical thinking about the incident.