One one hand, I agree - even a simple spring bumper between the cars could potentially have just made this an "oh, whoops!" moment. And cost a lot less than £5m.

However, on the other hand, these rides have got systems in place to protect the track from doing this in the first place. And in this incident, the staff specifically overrode those systems. This should be an unacceptable practise, and if I was running the park, I would insist that when anything like this happened, a full visual inspection of the track IN PERSON should be done (not via grainy CCTV), to make sure it's clear. If it is clear, a dual key system should be in place to authorize operations to continue, and one of those keys should be kept with a member of staff that supervisors that area of the park (in this case, X-Sector).

If you put bumpers on the cars, and had all that in place, you'd need a visual inspection, two people's confirmation, the ride safety system, AND the car bumpers to all fail in order to have an accident. And the chances of that happening are almost nill.

Also, half of me thinks £5m is too little of a fine...I'd have gone for £10m at least.