CCTV showing moment of Alton Towers Smiler crash released
Footage showing the moment a carriage on the Smiler rollercoaster at Alton Towers crashed into an empty car, leaving two teenagers needing leg amputations, has been shown in court.
Theme park operator Merlin is facing a large fine after it admitted health and safety failings following the accident on the £18 million ride in June last year.
Vicky Balch and Leah Washington each lost a leg in the crash and several other passengers were seriously injured.
On Monday, the jury at a two-day sentencing hearing at Stafford Crown Court was shown CCTV of the carriage slamming into a stationary empty car, which had come to a stop after it failed to complete a loop on a test run.
The video shows how, at 1.41pm on June 2, the empty car rolls backwards and takes two minutes and 13 seconds to come to a complete standstill on a horizontal section of the ride.
The CCTV footage then shows a carriage full of passengers stopped at the top of "Lift 1" at 1.43pm.
At 1.51pm, with the empty car still lying stationary further along the ride, the carriage packed with passengers is released from Lift 1.
Twenty six second later it slams into the empty car and the two stick together as they roll back and forth for around 90 seconds.
Video report by ITV News Correspondent Ben Chapman
Opening the case, barrister Bernard Thorogood said the kinetic energy involved in the crash was equivalent to "a family car of 1.5 tons having collided at about 90mph".
He said a test carriage had been sent around the 14-loop ride, but had failed - known as "valley-ing" - in the bottom-most part of the Cobra Roll area of the ride, unseen by ride staff.
The engineers had re-set the ride and overridden a computer system "block-stop" which they believed had halted the ride in error, sending a full 16-seater rollercoaster car around the track and into the empty carriage.
Lawyers for the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) have said the Smiler ride, which opened in 2013, never had "a proper settled system" for staff to follow when carriages stopped on the track.