A Ride to Die For

Looking for the thrill of a life time? Take a ride on the euthanasia roller coaster , designed by Julijonas Urbonas, a Ph.D. candidate in London’s Royal College of Art’s Design Interactions department from Lithuania. He has combined the fun of a roller coaster with the certainty of death.

The coaster—about a three minute ride—spends two minutes taking the soon-deceased to a height of 1,600 feet (there is an opt-out button before reaching the apex should the individual chicken out). The last minute is a colossal fall rushing through seven increasingly tighter loops and reaching a speed of 200-plus mph. The accumulating g-forces peak at 10gs, but that will likely pass unnoticed because the rider will be dead upon reaching the third one. This says Urbonas, “is a hypothetic euthanasia machine . . . engineered to humanely—with elegance and euphoria—take the life of a human being.” He foresees this becoming a possible attraction in places where voluntary euthanasia is legal—Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington—all without the accompanying paperwork dealing with medical issues and the like frequently delaying someone’s death wish.

This probably isn’t suited for quadriplegics or amputees, we’re told. Since their bodies lack substantial volume in the lower extremities to pool the blood their brains might not suffer the indispensable life-killing lack of oxygen that 10gs would ordinarily generate. That, just a passing note, would seem to undermine equal accessibility laws but I’m not an expert in that area and I don’t like roller coasters anyway.