Child dies after being thrown from ride at Royal Adelaide Show

An eight-year-old Adelaide girl has died after being thrown from a high-speed ride at the Royal Adelaide Show.

Showgoers watched in horror as paramedics began treating the girl at the scene, after she fell from the Airmaxx 360 ride shortly after 12pm.

A Med Star road retrieval team took the girl to the Women's and Children's Hospital in Adelaide, but her injuries proved fatal.

The girl's mother reportedly witnessed the accident.

Police and work safety investigators examining the ride are focusing on the seat from which the girl was catapulted 10m to the ground.

Witness accounts suggested the girl's restraint had either failed, or not been properly secured.

File footage from the 2013 Royal Melbourne Show shows the Airmaxx 360 ride in action.

Passengers ride in hinged capsules that rotate at high speed around a central column.

The ride was at the show for the first time, and had been safety checked in the days before the event.

Today's was not the first serious ride accident at the Royal Adelaide Show.

In 2002 the Spin Dragon collapsed, injuring 37 people.

And four years later two teenagers were hurt when another ride crashed into a metal deck.