Suicide Net to be Built on Golden Gate Bridge, SF
 

I find this piece of news interesting. It makes me think of several things such as, how do people have access to the bridge in such a way that makes it possible to commit suicide? We have a very similar bridge in Lisbon and I never hear of these things. Maybe it happens, I don't know. It's no more a suicide magnet than other high-up places.

I find it interesting that this could affect the bird population of the area negatively, I think this is of some importance. I find it interesting that half of people asked, voted against the net; but it's being built anyway. I find it interesting that 2/3 of suicide attempts are stopped by bridge staff, effectively meaning this net might only actually help 8 people per year.

Is it worth spending such large amounts of money to save the lives of 24 people per year? Perhaps it could be better applied elsewhere and save many more lives per year, of people who may want to stay alive. This may sound crass to you, but I'm not saying I have no sympathy for people who find themselves despairing so much they feel it's better to be dead. I'm just being...practical? You can take it the wrong way if you like, what can I say.

So why do you think this net is being built? Do you think it's worth building? Do you think it's worth building it on this kind of estimate? Do you think it will deter the people who really want to commit suicide?

For me, this seems like a political, image of the city move. I think it's worth building, but not for this kind of money. I don't think it will deter the people who want to commit suicide, they will just go somewhere else.

This makes me curious. Where do the dead bodies end up when they land? Do they end up at the bottom? Do they float out to sea? Do the float into the bay and wash ashore? I mean, is it really that bad for the city that people dispose of themselves in this manner? I'd figure its cheaper than having the police and paramedics and coroner involved at some apartment on Haight Street where a depressed hipster blew their brains out.

Normally bodies will float and wash up on shore somewhere nearby, cue the newspapers.

I'd like to see pictures of these suicide nets though.

People jump off the Brooklyn Bridge all the time. Nobody ever reports it.

I don't see the point of building a net. If someone wants to commit suicide, he'll do it anyway regardless of the net. He just won't do it by jumping of a bridge. So I don't think the net will save any lives. But it will cost a fortune to build, probably a substantial amount to maintain, and will degrade the appearence of the bridge.

In truth, I have read that adding these "nets" will help discourage the jumpers and save the Bridge and Counties more money from the jumper sitings rubber necking that occurs when the entire Bridge closes and traffic is stopped into upper Marin and in the Presidio.

Seen this happen far too often. Also a friend who worked in a toll booth told me this bit of trvia a year ago.

The Coast Guard goes out and recovers most of the bodies. I went to the Navy welding and fire fighting school on Treasure Island in the middle of San Francisco Bay. The CG boat station on the south end of the island (actually considered Yerba Buena Island, though connected) was responsible for pulling "floaters" from the bay. They had interesting stories and disturbing photos to share at the on base NCO club (bar for enlisted.) When a person jumps from that height and hits water it's literally worse then concrete as the water forms to the body and the impact point is the entire body.

I wonder if they invested the funds in some mental health clinics/programs in the Bay Area if they'd have a better return on their investment. I mean a net stops, maybe, someone from jumping. Therapy and counseling might stop the desire for one to hurt themselves.

That's because it's Brooklyn. If there is a city that is the complete opposite of SF... it's Brooklyn.

Maybe on a map... but not in it's attitude, demographics, and hipsterness....

There was a section about this phenomenon in Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. The book is more or less about how our brains able to process enormous amounts of information in an instant where days or weeks of conscious analysis might fail us. Anyway, I remember a chapter where he gives the example of suicide barricades. I don't remember any of the statistics exactly, but it was something about how some places give people all the cues that trigger the impulse to commit suicide while other places that are almost identical do not - that it's something about the combination of all the ideas associated with the place and the physical characteristics of the place itself. He then talks about some studies that were done where they split people who have attempted suicide into two categories - the ones who used methods that are pretty much failsafe (jumping from great heights, shooting yourself in the head...) vs. the ones who use methods that are likely to fail if someone intervenes in time (pills, slitting your wrists...). Again, I can't remember the exact results he reports, but the gist of the conclusion was that the people who are really suicidal over the long term and not just feeling a suicidal impulse because of temporary circumstances (like sudden foreclosure, job loss, divorce, etc.) are more likely to use the unsuccessful methods of suicide. The ones who just got a pink slip and a dear john letter in the same day and feel, in that moment, that there is nothing to live for are more likely to pick the irreversible methods - they are the ones who will shoot themselves in the head or jump off of bridges.

But then the interesting part is what this study says about the assumption that people who are suicidal and prevented from jumping off a bridge are just going to find another way to kill themselves. Based on the kind of people who end up jumping from bridges, the opposite is true. Those are usually the people who are happy to live and grateful for being rescued. Another part of the study (or maybe it was a separate one) surveyed people who had reported suicidal thoughts, and apparently a simple thing such as a physical barrier can prevent the whole thing. Since most of the people who jump off of bridges do so as a sort of impulse, these same people reported that they had once gone out intending to die and came home and decided to live after running into some kind of complication with their plan. One guy, for instance, wasn't able to get to the side of the bridge he wanted to jump from because of some traffic thing. He decided to just go home because he didn't want to die by getting hit by a car while trying to run across six lanes of traffic to get to the side of the bridge he wanted. In other words, he didn't really want to just die. He wanted to die in a grandiose scene that he imagined which involved a certain setting - he wanted to die the way he'd planned. That extra time and energy it took for him to consider running across six lanes of traffic got him thinking about whether or not he was really ready to die at all and it prevented his suicide.

Anyway, I don't know much that study came into play when they decided to erect the barrier, but I do know that a lot of suicide prevention advocacy groups push for this kind of thing at popular places to commit suicide because they are all very aware of this study and others like it. And, perhaps more importantly, it will actually work.

I can understand the theories behind this. I can see the humanitarian attempts as well. I can also relate to the harm on the environment and the aesthetics. In the end I have to look at the dollar signs. Although these deaths can be considered tragic to the families of the deceased I cannot say that it would be a financial expense that I would want to occur to prevent their deaths.

Huh.

Supple that report goes pretty much entirely against common sense. Thanks for it.

Supple Cow, thanks for the post, very interesting insight :thumbsup: .

How far of a jump is it before you hit the net? Can I pay $30 and jump off the bridge into the net and buy a t-shirt afterwards that says "I jumped off the Bay Bridge!"? I think that would pay for the net if you turned it into a ride.

:lol:

I would totally do it too. Bungee jumping never caught my fancy, but jumping into a net over the bay sounds rad.

Oh, and to Joz-bo and Smitty - don't thank me! I thought it was a pretty valuable and counterintuitive thing when I read it, so I just made a point to remember it. Before I read it, I was right there on that "they'll find a way to kill themselves anyway" boat. Maybe you can thank Malcolm Gladwell by reading his book or something. :)

What's to prevent someone from jumping onto the net, then crawling across it and jumping again from there?

I agree with the right to end your own life, but I don't believe in making people comb the bay for your body.

It's a shame, because a net might be an eyesore, but if people can't stop themselves, I don't see that they have another choice.

Nothing, except for the time it takes for them to do it. Most of them will rethink it and be grateful for the net by then.

This is a waste of money... not only that but someone is going to try and off themselves, wind up hurting themselves on the net, and sue the city for millions of dollars.

Making it an even larger waste of money.

Maybe they're just trying to prepare for fallout of the whole stockmarket game?

A suicide barrier was constructed along the Bloor viaduct in Toronto (official name is the Prince Edward Viaduct) and help line phones were installed at each end of the bridge. It has been in place for about 4 years now. The name of this barrier is "The Luminous Veil".

Apparently the number of suicides on this bridge since the net was erected has been zero.

Here's some lyrics on the subject from the BareNakedLadies:

Near where I live there's a viaduct
Where people jump when they're out of luck
Raining down on the cars and trucks below
They've put a net there to catch their fall
Like that'll stop anyone at all
What they don't know is when nature calls, you go


Bloor viaduct "Luminous Veil" a $6 million life saver - Opinions

Luminous Veil - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Prince Edward Viaduct

That was my question too. Unless the net will lower them down slowly to the water where the coast guard/police will be waiting.

Then you will have people doing it for fun. That is until they get sent to the pysch ward for a while.

Edit: Do you really think SF will go for something like this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:P...005-10-01.jpeg

People just want to feel good about things. I swear to the devil, half the time I am doing something for an employer its just because "he wants it that way" not because its of actual logistic importance. I ammount this to be about the same.


In Toronto we have a bridge that people jumped off, but below it were cars! lol so the importance of such a bridge was much more an issue. I believe the SF bridge has water below it, if I am not mistaken. I say fuck, we don't even have to clean up the mess that way. They probably are going to land on some poor bastard now!

Sigh.. its often the people who run around desperately trying to do some righteous act of goodness to the world that cause the most trouble!!

Don't quote me on that :)

[EDIT]

Oh wait!!!


I just thought of something very interesting that seems to go against what I just said.

What if someone is in crisis, and they are lost at a particular moment, but they don't really have no future, they just think they do not, and by having the net there, we get them past that hard moment in their life. Then, maybe, they never kill themselves after that. So the net was a beautiful gesture of the people, in a moment of need, and once the moment passed, the person was able to find some love.

Also, to answer one your questions, I believe the net will be constructed in such a manner that you will not be able to climb over it. It most probably will not be just a gigantic net that you can jump in for fun. Lmao I bet people would be jumping in it all the time. The one in Toronto is constructed of steel, and it is more of a unclimable fence than a net.



Bye

Gladwell kicks ass, and so does his hairdo:

http://www.mdcbowen.org/cobb/archives/gladwell.jpg

We need one of those on our Aurora Bridge...they are taking their sweet time, letting more people kill themselves.

Leto beat me to it, but as soon as I saw the thread title, I thought of 'War on Drugs' by the Barenaked Ladies:



As noted, the song describes the Bloor viaduct. It's a very pretty and very sad song, Supple's studies notwithstanding.