IamA a former Ride Operator at Cedar Point: The Roller Coaster Capital of The World, AMA!

Good question, A LOT.

Ride Operators: All ride operators are required to be trained by the International Ride Operator Certification course. This course is about 6 hours long, give or take. After that, every Ride Operator is supervised for several shifts before even being allowed to be alone at any kind of position. Every position at a ride takes about 2 hours to completely train at, and at each position, you go over all the basic safety guidelines. Each ride has anywhere from 4 to 10ish positions. In addition to that, all the training is continuous. We are constantly internally auditing all ride operations to make sure they are following all safety guide lines.

Ride Safety Features: Long story short, it is nearly impossible to "mess up". All rides have multiple safety features that make these rides incredibly safe. It's 100% safer to ride a roller coaster 1,000 times than it is to ride in a car once. For example, a ride operator can't just "forget" to lock a restraint. There is a detection system on all rides that tells the dispatcher whether or not all the restraints are properly locked and in-place. And the controller can't just accidentally dispatch a ride, as there is a series of steps that need to be taken to dispatch a ride (multiple buttons pressed at the same time, in a certain order). Second, if the ride detects a restraint that is not secure, the ride will not be enabled to dispatch to begin with.

/r/IAmA Thread Parent