As amusement parks provide `killer thrills' with taller and faster rides, safety standards are left largely to individual states, some of which don't require rides to be inspected.

As lap bars click into place on amusement-park rides across the country, millions of children put their little bodies into giant pieces of machinery that hurl them, twirl them and drop them from the sky -- all in the name of a thrill. And adults can't resist, either.

Thoughts of safety hardly cast a shadow on the smiles and shrill screams from these riders as they sit in massive metal contraptions that rumble over twisting tracks. According to Consumer Alert, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, government estimates place the odds of getting seriously injured on an amusement-park ride at one in 25 million. The odds of dying are one in 450 million. And, after all, surely someone out there is looking out after those pesky little safety issues. Right?

But the truth is that whether the ride is at Walt Disney World or at a traveling carnival that folds its' tents ,and vanishes as quickly as the thrill, the level of safety regulation or inspection applied -- if any at all -- depends on the state where the ride is located, as well as the site it's located at. The standards vary considerably, with limited national reporting of what injuries actually occur.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has the authority to investigate accidents on rides at mobile sites. But inspection is another matter; the CPSC does not regularly inspect rides. Since 1981, when Congress changed the law, the CPSC's jurisdiction has stopped short at the gates of nonmobile or fixed-site parks, such as Disney World or Six Flags America. Proponents say Congress changed the law to eliminate redundancy, while opponents say the industry lobbied successfully simply to get the government off its back.

Either way, these issues now are left up to individual states and local communities, says Marthena Cowart, director of information and public affairs for the CPSC. "We're a little agency," she tells Insight. The agency regulates consumer products. While it can regulate small carnival rides that travel from town to town, it cannot set foot in an amusement park for the purpose of regulating a ride that is fixed to the site, such as a roller coaster.

Last year, the agency supported efforts to regain jurisdiction of fixed-site amusement parks. Cowart could not say what portion of the agency's budget is spent on amusement-ride safety, but says any additional funding acquired with new responsibilities certainly would help "float the whole boat."

According to Cowart, in overseeing movable carnival rides, the CPSC supports the findings of state inspectors who make decisions about safety issues. She says the agency also serves as an information clearinghouse on reported incidents nationally. But reporting requirements vary from state to state. Some states make injury data available to the public and some do not. CPSC investigators may travel to amusement sites in the case of mobile rides only to investigate reports. But, Cowart says, they rarely do. It generally is left up to the states to look into.

Despite federal oversight, the CPSC reports that seven states (Alabama, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Missouri) have no state regulations and do not require that rides be inspected for safety. Six other states (Arizona, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Mexico, Tennessee and Texas) have insurance-company or other private inspections but do not require inspections by state or local regulators.

In Florida, where inspections of mobile rides are required each time one is set up, large fixed-site amusement parks with more than 1,000 employees are exempt from state inspections. These parks are self-regulated. Florida statutes do not even require the reporting of incidents unless someone is taken to a hospital, according to Izzy Rommes, bureau chief of the Bureau of Fairs and Expositions for Florida's Department of Agriculture, which oversees amusement-ride safety issues in the state.

That could make a difference in CPSC data since the agency relies on such reports from local communities in its own reporting of amusement-park safety issues.

Saferparks.org, an activist Website focused on amusement-park safety, says the only way publicly to report accidents on rides may be through the press because states such as Florida do not always report or investigate the accidents. Another Website that focuses on amusement-park safety advocacy, ThemeParkInsider.com, states that no official national record of theme-park accidents is kept in the United States.

The CPSC maintains a central database of ride-related accidents and injuries. But, according to Cowart, the information is acquired from a 100-hospital statistical sample, which critics say is not an accurate sample. Information also is acquired through death certificates, media reports and state-supplied information, as well as reports received directly from consumers, according to the CPSC.

Further to confuse things, the department to which amusement-ride safety falls varies from state to state. In Florida it's under the Department of Agriculture. In Oklahoma, it falls under the Department of Labor.

Currently, a bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., in the 106th Congress and reintroduced in May would restore jurisdiction over fixed-site amusement-park rides to the CPSC. Markey's bill would give CPSC authority to set standards, conduct inspections and investigations, recall equipment and levy civil penalties for violations on rides at permanent, as opposed to just mobile, amusement parks. The bill allows for $500,000 to get the program started. It is estimated that $5 million more is necessary to equip the federal agency to handle the additional responsibility.

However, Carol Dawson, former CPSC commissioner, has advocated against expanding the role of the CPSC. She says the organization doesn't possess the skill, nor is it equipped to handle the responsibility. She tells Insight that fixed-site amusement parks already are regulated adequately by the states, the amusement-park industry and insurance companies. As of this writing, no action on the bill had been scheduled.

But even with regard to mobile amusement sites, where the CPSC already has jurisdiction, the inconsistency of regulation, inspection and reporting makes it difficult to compile consistent, accurate data.

"One big problem is how you define a reportable injury," Rommes tells Insight. He says in Florida, if a person is transported to a hospital, then it is a reportable accident. Anything less significant does not have to be reported. There is no national definition as to what a reportable injury is, Rommes says. CPSC injury numbers do not include patients treated and released by medical clinics, family physicians or paramedics.

Additionally, one state safety director who did not want to be identified told Insight he thought it would be hard to say whether regulation of fixed sites by CPSC would do any good. "It's really at the local level. How would they look into incidents here locally?"

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The CPSC issues the "Directory of State Amusement Ride Safety Officials." It identifies the individual state offices dedicated to ride safety in an effort to encourage communication among the states and the federal government to identify unsafe amusement rides and prevent future ride incidents on a national level.

Early detection of the flaws in a ride called the Himalaya might have saved the life of a 15-year-old girl who was thrown from the ride at a Texas carnival as it whirled around its track in 1998. USA Today reported that a year before Leslie Lane was killed on the ride, Florida officials ordered changes to a similar ride after a similar accident occurred in that state. As a result of the earlier Florida incident, the state required backup safety changes in all the Himalaya rides in the state.

Many assert that those changes -- if they had been made in Texas as well -- would have saved Lane's life. The USA Today article quoted an official from the Department of Insurance, which is responsible for amusement rides in Texas, as saying that the department was not aware of the changes made to the rides in Florida and that it would have passed the information along to ride operators in Texas had it known. Unlike in Florida, however, even if the information had been passed along in Texas, the state has no authority to order such fixes.