For more than 200 years, roller coasters have provided a safe and relatively inexpensive way for thrill-seekers to experience the heart-pounding, stomach-flipping, adrenaline rush of, well… defying death. A newspaperman put it this way in 1884, when he described one of the first roller coasters ever opened in America: “The Coney Island roller coaster is a contrivance designed to give passengers, for the insignificant expenditure of 5 cents, all the sensation of being carried away by a cyclone, without attendant sacrifice of life and limb.”
Plenty has changed in the world of roller coasters since that wooden attraction’s debut, but the basic principle of maximum excitement with minimum risk remains the same. Ride engineers have only improved on both fronts, making safer rides that spin, shoot, drop and turn passengers…