Shame on San Francisco

Disagree totally.

You can't have beautiful, monumental, architectural structures surrounded by suicide barriers. If someone wants to kill themselves they will, simple as. 99.99% of us appreciate them as something awesome and life-affirming.

That's a good point. Personally, I think the original poster should start a fund to pay for it, and invite the other "pro-barrier" people to help contribute to the construction of one. Then you'll see how much they really care about this issue.

I doubt that a barrier would cost as much as that. The bridge already has barriers. The issue is to raise them from approximately 4 feet to 8 feet.
At any rate, it would be a once off cost. How much cost is incurred on a yearly basis due to the suicides? Launching the retrieval vessels, the coroners costs, the bad publicity etc etc. I sure the cost of not errecting a barrier is also higher than any of us could imagine. Barriers have been seen to work in other locations. Its the responsible thing to do in my opinion.

Slacr1 take a read of this, quoted from The New Yorker, it's about a mother finding out a bit more about her 14 year old daughters death;

"When Milligan examined her daughter’s computer afterward, she discovered that Marissa had been visiting a how-to Web site about suicide that featured grisly autopsy photos. The site notes that many suicide methods are ineffective (poison is fatal only fifteen per cent of the time, drug overdose twelve per cent, and wrist cutting a mere five per cent) and therefore recommends bridges, noting that “jumps from higher than . . . 250 feet over water are almost always fatal.” Milligan bought the proprietor of the site’s book, “Suicide and Attempted Suicide,” and read the following sentence: “The Golden Gate Bridge is to suicides what Niagara Falls is to honeymooners.” She returned the book and gave the computer away."

So as you can see there is a greater chance of dying from jumping off a bridge as opposed to various other methods you have mentioned and the way I see it is, the greater the chance of dying the lesser the chance of survival (correct me if I'm wrong).

Scourged take a read of these two other snippets from another part of the same article above, it proves that barriers do prevent suicide;

"The Empire State Building, the Duomo, St. Peter’s Basilica, and Sydney Harbor Bridge were all suicide magnets before barriers were erected on them. So were Mt. Mihara, a volcano in Japan (more than six hundred people jumped into it in 1936 alone); the Arroyo Seco Bridge, in Pasadena; and the Eiffel Tower. At Prince Edward Viaduct, in Toronto, the site of nearly five hundred fatal jumps, engineers just finished constructing a four-million-dollar “luminous veil” of stainless-steel rods above the railing. At all of these places, after the barriers were in place the number of jumpers declined to a handful, or to zero."

If barriers are put up, it will either significantly reduce the amount of deaths on the bridge or perhaps even stop them completely.
You may say they will find another way to suicide, however there is also evidence that this is not true see here;

"A familiar argument against a barrier is that thwarted jumpers will simply go elsewhere. In 1953, a bridge supervisor named Mervin Lewis rejected an early proposal for a barrier by saying it was preferable that suicides jump into the Bay than dive off a building “and maybe kill somebody else.” (It’s a public-safety issue.) Although this belief makes intuitive sense, it is demonstrably untrue. Dr. Seiden’s study, “Where Are They Now?,” published in 1978, followed up on five hundred and fifteen people who were prevented from attempting suicide at the bridge between 1937 and 1971. After, on average, more than twenty-six years, ninety-four per cent of the would-be suicides were either still alive or had died of natural causes. “The findings confirm previous observations that suicidal behavior is crisis-oriented and acute in nature,” Seiden concluded; if you can get a suicidal person through his crisis—Seiden put the high-risk period at ninety days—chances are extremely good that he won’t kill himself later."

If the oppurtunity is taken away, or significantly reduced, from people wanting to suicide there is going to be a reduced number of deaths, as people learn to deal with various stresses and traumatic experiences in their lives, they learn to overcome the thought they once had of suicide.

I strongly agree with the original poster and although the topice you have raise may not be controllable by the majority of San Fransisco dwellers, I think there should be more knowledge and understanding of the subject as it seems the general public do not want to have to face anything to do with mental illness and I believe this due to the lazy, gutless and shallow attitude of the government when it comes to educating people about these issues.

Twas a long post, however Scourged, Slacr1and anyone else with similar view points, I hope you had the time to read this, as it seems you don't know everything about the very broad subject and situation at hand.

People who are suicidal are going to end their life. I had a friend who was suicidal, his mother called the police, he ended up being baker acted and you know what he did as soon as he was release? He got a gun and blew his brains out. His note said that being in a mental hospital just affirmed his belief that he could no longer live in this world.

So quit your whining. You can't save the world. Deal with it.



-We are all of us in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars

[deleted]

I'm curious to know why you think you have the right to stop people from killing themselves if, after careful reflection, they decide that suicide is the best option for them? Our life belongs to us - my life belongs to me, not to you, and why should you grant yourself the right to tell me what to do with my body?

living a life I never asked to be born into

It is stupid to ruin a beautiful and historic structure like the bridge, that millions of people enjoy, for the 24 or so desperate jerks per year who decide to use it to end it all. It's easy to jump off my apartment building too, I don't hear my city crying for a barrier. LEAVE THE GOLDEN GATE ALONE!

The question is, do you want to prevent people from committing suicide, or just prevent them from doing it by jumping off the Golden Gate bridge?

The second effort could be achieved at the cost of millions of dollars, and ruining the beauty of the bridge. Since the jumpers who would be prevented from using the Golden Gate bridge could simply end their lives by any number of other methods (including choosing one of the other 7 bridges in the bay area to leap off, or walk in front of a bus or semi truck or train etc etc etc), erecting a barrier would be an exercise in futility.

Also, please consider that since people ARE GOING TO commit suicide, no matter what prevention methods are put in place, maybe it is better they choose a method such as the GG bridge since they won't harm anyone else. I'm all for barriers on tall buildings like the empire state since those jumpers will land on the streets and sidewalks, traumatizing or killing others. Not good.
Those that jump into traffic will cause crashes and other deaths.
Choose the train, and you traumatize the conductor, and whoever has to clean that up, not to mention making hundreds of people late for work.

The question is, do you want to prevent people from committing suicide, or just prevent them from doing it by jumping off the Golden Gate bridge?

The second effort could be achieved at the cost of millions of dollars, and ruining the beauty of the bridge. Since the jumpers who would be prevented from using the Golden Gate bridge could simply end their lives by any number of other methods (including choosing one of the other 7 bridges in the bay area to leap off, or walk in front of a bus or semi truck or train etc etc etc), erecting a barrier would be an exercise in futility.

Also, please consider that since people ARE GOING TO commit suicide, no matter what prevention methods are put in place, maybe it is better they choose a method such as the GG bridge since they won't harm anyone else. I'm all for barriers on tall buildings like the empire state since those jumpers will land on the streets and sidewalks, traumatizing or killing others. Not good.
Those that jump into traffic will cause crashes and other deaths.
Choose the train, and you traumatize the conductor, and whoever has to clean that up, not to mention making hundreds of people late for work.

It has been proven in other suicide hot-spots that a suicide barrier helped reduce the overall suicides in the area/city where it was located. After the barriers were enacted, no suicides were reported on these bridges & there was no spike in deaths in other parts of the city. There are other bridges besides the Golden Gate Bridge, e.g. Bay Bridge, but there are no reported suicides (that I'm aware of) from this bridge. It isn't drawing people in, it's not as beautiful, & it's not as historical for this very gruesome act.

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