Does anyone have any thoughts on this failure? I'm curious what the typical inspection schedule and process is for a roller coaster like this.
I'm also curious about the root cause of the failure. I have a guess, but it would be interesting to see an actual failure report. I don't expect to see it in the news, though.
Here is a video of the crack moving as roller coaster cars go by.
Someone also got a photo of the crack a week prior before it had fully propagated through the support.
You aren't wrong, but they are also going to need to verify the fatigue design of that detail. That connection detail is rather rigid, so the model they used for the design of that weld may not have accurately modeled the stress at that weld.
This is the kind of issue someone can get a PhD trying to solve.