The Golden Gate Bridge is the second-most used suicide site/suicide bridge in the world, after the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge (see List of suicide sites). The deck is about 245 feet (75 m) above the water. After a fall of four seconds, jumpers hit the water at around 75 mph or about 120 km/h. Most of the jumpers die from impact trauma. About 5% of the jumpers survive the initial impact but generally drown or die of hypothermia in the cold water. Most suicidal jumps occur on the side facing the bay. The side facing the Pacific is closed to pedestrians. An official suicide count was kept until the year 1995, sorted according to which of the bridges 128 lamp posts the jumper was nearest when he or she jumped. The official count ended on June 5, 1995 on the 997th jump; jumper No. 1000, Eric Atkinson (25), jumped on July 3, 1995. Earlier in 1995, a local shock jock had offered a case of Snapple to the family of the 1000th suicide victim. Consequently, Marin County coroner Ken Holmes asked local media to stop reporting the total number of jumpers. By 2012 the unofficial count exceeded 1,600 (in which the body was recovered or someone saw the jump) and new suicides were occurring about once every two weeks, according to a San Francisco Chronicle analysis. The most suicides in one month were in August 2013, when 10 jumped, one every three days. The total count for the year 2013 was 46, with an additional 118 attempts prevented, making it the year with the highest tally so far. The rate of incidence has risen to nearly one every other day. The youngest jumper has been 5 year old Marilyn DeMont, who was told to jump and was followed by her father in June 1945. For comparison, the reported third-most popular place to commit suicide in the world, Aokigahara Forest in Japan, has a record of 108 bodies, found within the forest in 2004, with an average of 30 a year. There were 34 bridge-jump suicides in 2006 whose bodies were recovered, in addition to four jumps that were witnessed but whose bodies were never recovered, and several bodies recovered suspected to be from bridge jumps. The California Highway Patrol removed 70 apparently suicidal people from the bridge that year. There is no accurate figure on the number of suicides or completed jumps since 1937, because many were not witnessed. People have been known to travel to San Francisco specifically to jump off the bridge, and may take a bus or cab to the site; police sometimes find abandoned rental cars in the parking lot. Currents beneath the bridge are strong and some jumpers have undoubtedly been washed out to sea without being seen. The fatality rate of jumping is roughly 98%. As of July 2013, only 34 people are known to have survived the jump. Those who do survive strike the water feet-first and at a slight angle, although individuals may still sustain broken bones or internal injuries. One young woman, Sarah Rutledge Birnbaum, survived, but returned to jump again and died the second time. One young man survived a jump in 1979, swam to shore, and drove himself to a hospital. The impact cracked several of his vertebrae. On March 10, 2011, 17-year-old Luhe Otter Vilagomez from Windsor High School in Windsor, California, survived a jump from the bridge, breaking his coccyx and puncturing one lung, though he said his attempt was for fun and not suicide. The teen was helped to shore by Frederic Lecouturier, 55, who was surfing under the bridge when he saw Vilagomez jump. The California Highway Patrol (CHP) recommended that the San Francisco District Attorneys Office charge the student with misdemeanor trespassing (a charge that entails climbing any rail, cable, suspender rope, tower or superstructure not intended for public use), punishable by up to a year in the county jail and/or a fine up to $10,000. Additionally, the CHP Marin Area recommended the teen undergo a medical/psychiatric evaluation by medical professionals. Engineering professor Natalie Jeremijenko, as part of her Bureau of Inverse Technology art collective, created a Despondency Index by correlating the Dow Jones Industrial Average with the number of jumpers detected by Suicide Boxes containing motion-detecting cameras, which she claimed to have set up under the bridge.[93] The boxes purportedly recorded 17 jumps in three months, far greater than the official count. The Whitney Museum, although questioning whether Jeremijenkos suicide-detection technology actually existed, nevertheless included her project in its prestigious Whitney Biennial.[94] Various methods have been tried to reduce the number of suicides. The bridge is fitted with suicide-hotline telephones and staff patrol the bridge in carts, looking for people who appear to be planning to jump. Ironworkers on the bridge also volunteer their time to prevent suicides by talking to or wrestling down suicidal people.[95] The bridge is now closed to pedestrians at night. Cyclists are still permitted across at night, but can buzz themselves in and out through the remotely controlled security gates.[96] Attempts to introduce a suicide barrier have been thwarted by engineering difficulties, high costs, and public opposition. One recurring proposal had been to build a barrier to replace or augment the low railing, a component of the bridges original architectural design, as amended by the second designer in the final blueprint.[A] New barriers have eliminated suicides at other landmarks around the world, but were opposed for the Golden Gate Bridge for reasons of cost, aesthetics, and safety, as the load from a poorly designed barrier could significantly affect the bridges structural integrity during a strong windstorm. On June 27, 2014 California approved a funding plan to install a suicide barrier beneath the bridge to catch suicide jumpers. Strong appeals for a suicide barrier, fence, or other preventive measures were raised again by a well-organized vocal minority of psychiatry professionals, suicide barrier consultants, and families of jumpers beginning in January 2005. These efforts were given momentum by two films dealing with the topic of suicide and the Golden Gate Bridge. On January 14, 2005 the San Francisco Chronicle published an open letter by writer-director Jenni Olson calling for a suicide barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge. The letter was, in part, an excerpt from the script of her film The Joy of Life, which world-premiered the following week, on January 20, 2005, at the Sundance Film Festival. The day before, on January 19, 2005, the Chronicle broke the news that filmmaker Eric Steel had been shooting suicide leaps from the bridge during 2004 for his film The Bridge, which would be released in 2006. A week later, The Joy of Life world-premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and video copies of the film were circulated to members of the Bridge District board of directors with the help of the Psychiatric Foundation of Northern California. In the fall of 2005 the San Francisco Chronicle published a seven-part series of articles, titled Lethal Beauty, focusing on the problem of suicide and the Golden Gate Bridge and emphasizing that a solution was not just possible, but even desirable. The 2006 release of The Bridge exerted additional pressure on the Bridge District and created continued public awareness. Filmmaker Eric Steel and his production crew spent 2004 filming the bridge from several vantage points, in order to film actual suicide jumps. The film chronicled 23 jumps, most notably that of Gene Sprague, as well as a handful of thwarted attempts. The film also contained interviews with surviving family members of those who jumped; interviews with witnesses; and, in one segment, an interview with Kevin Hines who, as a 19-year-old in 2000, survived a suicide plunge from the span and is now a vocal advocate for some type of bridge barrier or net to prevent such incidents. Kevin Briggs, a highway patrolman on the bridge, is credited with saving hundreds of lives of would-be jumpers by talking to them before they can take the plunge. Despite past suicides, Briggs and others in his department estimate that with the help of cameras and heeding to dialogues they save at least 80–90% of people intending to jump. Suicide barrier On October 10, 2008 the Golden Gate Bridge and Transportation District Board of Directors voted 15 to 1 for the preferred option of installing a plastic-covered stainless-steel net below the bridge as a suicide deterrent.[101] The netting barrier was initially estimated to cost $40–50 million to complete.[102][103][104] On July 28, 2010, the board received $5 million from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) towards conducting a final design study of the barrier. However, a funding source for the overall project still had not been identified, and there was concern that this lack of funding could delay the nets deployment. The lack of funding for the project continued to delay the schedule of completion. In 2012, President Obama enacted the Transportation Re-authorization Bill permitting federal funding towards transportation infrastructure projects. Initially, the bill didnt divert funding automatically. However, advocates of the barrier, such as Bridge Rail Foundation, were eventually successful in securing support for the project in 2014. In March 2014, The New York Times reported that it is expected that the directors of the Bridge District will vote to change its policy and allow the use of toll money to supplement governmental funds for a suicide barrier. The suicide barrier consists of stainless steel netting stretching 20 feet (6.1 m) out on either side of the bridge, and 20 feet below the bridge. Funding for building this barrier was unanimously approved by the Golden Gate Bridge Board of Directors on June 27, 2014. The MTC approved to contribute $27 million of the $76-million overall cost for the project, and federal, state, and local authorities will likewise contribute to the project. The completion of the project is estimated to be completed in 2018.
Posted on: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 07:57:55 +0000
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