Interestingly, the article never talks about WHY the Punga slides have had so many injuries. Other water parks (like Blizzard Beach) have head-first mat slides and we don’t hear about the same problems. The basic answer is that the ride-out at the end was way too short. After the slides opened, it was common to see adults fly past the end of the ride-out and onto the pavement. They tried to fix that by adding a splashdown at the end with about a foot of water or so - still didn’t really work (and forced the mat upwards into your face when you hit it). The reduced weight limit (150 pounds) was to keep riders from picking up more speed and shooting past the run-out at the bottom - watch the mat racers at Blizzard Beach sometime and how much further the adults go at the end versus the kids.
Haven’t seen these now that they’re converted to body slides - they had torn up the bottom completely to install new catch pools. The reality is they tried to fit a larger set of slides into a compact area that didn’t have enough space at the end. Which is a shame as the slides are pretty fun.