Chicago Area Local News

CHICAGO (CBS) ― You assume you and your kids are safe when you get strapped into an amusement ride.

Operators are supposed to be watching the ride to insure your safety.

But wait until you see the shocking behavior 2 Investigator Dave Savini uncovered this summer in "Ticket to Danger."

They rock, spin, flip and move at dangerously high speeds -- amusement rides requiring the operator's full attention.

But that's not what the 2 Investigators found happening at the DuPage County Fair and a festival in Wood Dale this month.

We caught operators ignoring safety procedures repeatedly. What did we catch them doing? They were texting. And texting. And texting on their cell phones.

"I was glad you bought it to our attention," Rob Driskill said.

The man in charge of the controls of one ride called the Super Shot was texting and not paying attention. The ride's owner says it lifts children and adults 60 feet in the air and then drops them abruptly.

We showed our undercover video to Rob Driskill, whose family runs Spectacular Midways, a traveling carnival based in Calumet Park. He agreed that the operator should be standing up, with both hands on the controls, and paying attention to the ride.

He was concerned at everything we found, like one operator we caught repeatedly texting on his phone. A few minutes later, the controls were taken over by another operator. He, too, pulled out his phone.

"You know, we try so hard to keep an eye on our operation -- to keep on an eye on your employees -- and that's just one thing that got past us," Driskill told Savini.

He says the carnival company  -- a family-run business for 35 years -- has a safe record and that they were not aware of how prevalent the texting and cell phone use had become.

"He needs to be looking up at the ride as it goes up, in case there is an emergency, if he had to hit the emergency stop button," Driskill said of one operator.

Because of our CBS 2 investigation, the owners of Specatular Midways have started collecting the cell phones of all their ride operators before each event.

"They were told that if they didn't give us their cell phones they or put them up they would be terminated," Driskill said.

Spectacular Midways isn't the only amusement ride company with workers under the microscope.

In Pennsylvania, Maxine Holmes got scared when she started to slip out of a ride called the Wipe Out. She managed to strap herself in, but the ordeal led to a CBS investigation by our sister station in Philadelphia.

"It could have been really dangerous," Holmes said.

Just last month, they, too, caught ride operators texting on the job at an amusement park on the Jersey Shore.

One operator in charge of manually applying the brakes on a roller coaster grabbed his cell phone to text and had to apply the brakes in between messages. Back here in Illinois, Driskill says they've already put a stop to it.

"We are glad that we can do something about it before anything bad could happen to anybody," he said.

Rob Driskill and his family have a good reputation in the business and they acted immediately upon our findings. Driskill says he would support a state law banning the use of cell phones for amusement ride operators. Because of our findings, they have instituted their own policy against it.

The state Department of Labor requires proper training and that ride operators pay attention. But there's nothing specific that bans the use of cellular or electronic devices while at the controls.

OTHER STORIES ABOUT CARNIVAL DANGERS:
 Sex Offenders May Be Among Carnival Workers
 Carinval Raids Reveal Sex Offenders
 Lawmakers Responding To Carnival Investigation

(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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