NJ is the 5th most dangerous state for amusement park injuries

If this is bad news, it’s probably a good move to tell you about it in the off-season when rides and amusement parks aren’t so top of mind.

A study just came out done by a personal injury group, The Fitch Law Firm, out of Ohio. They analyzed injury reports from amusement parks in every state from 2010 to 2017. Then, they compared those statistics with the state’s population on a per capita basis to determine which states were most dangerous for amusement parks.

New Jersey saw 533 injuries during those years, which works out to 5.74 injuries per 100,000 people. That puts us in 5th place among all states.

Hey, there are worse. No. 1 in the nation for most injuries is New Hampshire, with a rate almost triple ours. That’s followed by No. 2 Pennsylvania 14.71 per 100,000 people, No. 3 Oklahoma 10.43 per 100,000, and No. 4 California 7.87 per 100,000.

Besides, once we lived through the Action Park years of the 1980s, do they think New Jerseyans are afraid of anything? We wore the injuries like badges of honor after the bloody weekends we survived. Once you’ve seen your bone due to damage done on the Alpine Slide or split your leg open on someone else’s tooth embedded in the inside of the Cannonball Loop water slide, you’re immune to fear.

Some of the safest states in the study were Oregon, Virginia, and Georgia, each with only one injury in the entire 2010 to 2017 period.

Their amusement parks must be no fun at all.

Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Jeff Deminski only.

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