Suicide Isn't Painless
It's looking like after years and years of discussion, the Powers that Be who are in charge of the Golden Gate Bridge are slowly moving towards putting a suicide barrier along the bridge to prevent people from jumping. Last Thursday, the Bridge Directors voted to study plans to put them up. The decision came after a tearful and emotional meeting the previous day in which families of people who jumped and a few people who survived the jump pleaded with the bridge directors to build the barrier. Of course, voting to study an issue doesn't necessarily make something happen as voting for a study is a sure-fire way to not make something happen, but this has been the biggest movement on the issue in a long time.
Since the bridge was built in 1937, an estimated 1,500 have leapt to their death on the bridge, but the number is completely unknown as the bodies of many who have jumped have never been found. In recent years, an average of 24 people have jumped each year, one attempt every two weeks. A debate about putting a barrier on the bridge has raged since the mid-50s when it was first proposed but has gone nowhere since, with the last proposal coming in 1999. The reason why the proposal never goes anywhere? It'll ruin the view, of course. Says a mother of somebody who jumped, "what kind of monster would stand there before me and tell me that aesthetics are more important than my son's life?"
Well, apparently, there are a lot of monsters out there. Just check out the letters to the Examiner printed a few days after the hearing. Or what's going on in the internets (we'll save you from reading the Free Republic message board on the issue because, well, just because). As politically incorrect as it may sound and as inhuman as it may sound, there are some good points to be made in not putting up a barrier. Like is it really worth building a barrier and ruining maybe one of the most famous views in the world because a small, tiny percentage of people use it for harm? Do we have to child safety cap everything? Despite some statements made during the hearing and a few lawsuits filed against the directors of the bridge, it's not the bridge's fault somebody jumped. It's just a bridge. It's not like there's a group of sirens out there somewhere in the fog calling completely happy people that they might as well jump. On the other hand, it's pretty darn easy to jump off that bridge. There’s also the argument that putting up a barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge will just make people jump off the Bay Bridge, but that might not happen because there's a certain romance to jumping of the Golden Gate Bridge. As a researcher on suicide said, nobody will jump off the Bay Bridge because it's considered "tacky." This is the Bay Area, after all. Then, of course, there are free will issues and whether we should let somebody kill themself if they want to, such a touchy subject these days that it helped Million Dollar Baby win an Oscar. Oh, and, of course, there's monetary issues in that all of this is gonna cost money and we're already going to be hit with higher fees as it is.
In other words, SFist doesn't know what to think. We sure do love that view, however.