Offbeat | UK theme park shut after roller coaster crash injures 4

The owners of Britain’s Alton Towers said yesterday that they don’t know when the amusement park will reopen after four people were seriously injured in a crash between two roller coaster cars.
West Midlands Ambulance Service said men aged 27 and 18 and women aged 19 and 17 suffered serious leg injuries when a car carrying 16 people on the Smiler ride crashed into an empty, stationary car on Tuesday. The other 12 passengers were treated for less serious injuries.
It took rescuers several hours to remove the passengers, who were stuck 25 feet (8 meters) above ground at a 45 degree angle.
Chief executive Nick Varney of Merlin Entertainments, which owns the park 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of London, said an investigation was underway.
He said a supposedly fail-safe measure to stop two cars crashing “didn’t work the way it was supposed to.”
“I and the whole team are totally devastated by what happened yesterday,” he told the BBC.
The Smiler, which opened in 2013, is billed as the world’s first roller coaster with 14 loops. It has been shut down twice before because of technical or mechanical problems. AP