From the wikipedia entry on the Golden Gate Bridge (section on suicides)…
Suicides
The Golden Gate Bridge is notorious as a site for suicide. The official suicide count ended in 1995 when the number approached 1,000. In the eight years preceding 2003, there was an average of one suicide jump every two weeks, which brought the unofficial total to over 1,300 suicides. Until the official count was discontinued, suicide locations were officially documented according to which of the bridge’s 128 lamp posts the jumper was nearest to when he or she jumped. Currently, it is said that a person jumps off the Golden Gate Bridge every 15 days.
The 220 foot (67 m) fall from the bridge takes four seconds and jumpers hit the water at 75 miles per hour (120 km/h). As of 2006, only 26 people are known to have survived the jump. Those who do survive always strike the water feet first and most suffer multiple internal injuries and broken bones. One young man, John Kevin Hines, survived a jump off the bridge in 2000, although the impact broke his back and shattered multiple vertebrae.
As a suicide prevention initiative, this sign promotes a special telephone available on the bridge that connects to a crisis hotline.
A young woman from Piedmont, California, Sarah Rutledge Birnbaum, may be the only person to have jumped from the bridge twice. She survived the first jump in early 1988, but died in her second attempt later that year.
Methods have been discussed to reduce the number of suicides. One idea introduced has been to close the bridge to pedestrians at night. Cyclists are still permitted across at night, but they have to be buzzed in and out through the remotely controlled security gates. Attempts to introduce a suicide barrier have been thwarted by engineering difficulties, high costs, and public opposition. The estimated cost of a barrier is between $15 and $20 million. On January 27, 2005, Bridge District staff re-introduced for the eighth time the topic of a suicide barrier to the Bridge’s Building and Operations committee, citing “the high profile of this issue in recent press and community conversations.” On March 11, 2005, the Board of Directors of the Golden Gate Bridge voted 15-1 to approve a two-year, $2 million plan to explore the feasibility of a barrier. Proponents of the barrier cite the example of the Empire State Building and the Eiffel Tower, where suicides dropped to zero after a barrier was put up. Those against the barrier argue that a barrier would be unsightly, too costly, and would simply move suicides elsewhere. One way of discouraging suicides, rather than directly preventing them, Jump for Life was proposed in late 2005. The program seeks to make the bridge a less attractive place to take one’s own life.
Suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge is a theme of Jenni Olson’s experimental film, The Joy of Life (2005) and documentarian Eric Steel’s controversial 2006 film The Bridge.
The Bureau of Inverse Technology have deployed a number of Suicide Boxes containing motion-detecting cameras to monitor suicides on the Golden Gate Bridge and correlate, in real-time, the number of jumpers with the Dow Jones Industrial Index to create their novel, and frighteningly real, Despondency Index.
- See also: suicide bridge.