A CATALOGUE of errors led to the death of a young student as she enjoyed a white-knuckle rollercoaster ride, a court heard yesterday.

Gemma Savage, a student at Durham University, was killed five years ago when two cars collided on the Treetop Twister ride at Lightwater Valley, near Ripon.

She had earlier told her boyfriend, Joseph Shimmin, that she was not worried about the ride because it did not seem "that scary".

French company Reverchon Industries SA, which made and supplied the ride, is on trial at Leeds Crown Court charged with failing to ensure its safe design and construction, and failing to give information necessary to ensure the ride was safe when it was in use.

The company is not represented in the proceedings, nor was it at any of the earlier hearings.

Mr Shimmin told the court that Miss Savage, 20, from Wath-on-Dearne, South Yorkshire, had not been concerned about the ride because of its low height restriction of only 1.1 metres.

James Goss QC said an investigation showed a number of serious errors had been made that led to the fatal collision.

A wiring error that should have been discovered during the company's testing meant the ride's control system was unsafe.

The ride was brought to an automatic halt because the car ahead of Miss Savage's had failed to reach the top of a slope.

Emergency staff were summoned but a manual override device failed to work properly, and the car in which Miss Savage and her boyfriend were travelling was released, leading to the collision.

Mr Goss said: "Gemma Savage's head was thrown backwards. There was no form of head restraint and her head came into contact with a protruding bolt."

The court heard that French engineers were also responsible for training Lightwater Valley staff, but only one of the engineers could speak English.

The training took less than two hours and Mr Goss said it was "a general talk about how the ride would work rather than a detailed talk about maintenance."

The trial continues today.

The owners of the theme park, Lightwater Valley Attractions Limited, and maintenance engineer Eric Butters, of Fairways Avenue, Harrogate, have already admitted charges brought by the Health and Safety Executive.

They will be sentenced next week.