Posted on 02/01/2005 6:48:47 PM PST by Cagey
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - San Francisco officials are again grappling with an issue as old as the Golden Gate Bridge: how to stop people from killing themselves by jumping off the city's most famous landmark.
Later next month the agency that oversees the towering, nearly two mile-(3 km-)long span that links San Francisco with Marin County will decide whether to commission the most comprehensive study in a generation of erecting a suicide barrier. San Francisco's legislature also plans hearings.
"People's lives are involved and it is a sensitive issue," said Maureen Middlebrook, president of the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District, said on Monday. "We have had family members come to us at board meetings in the past, and it is often times very tragic."
Sparking the latest debate are two films, one still in production, on bridge suicides. One film was shown at this month's Sundance Film Festival in Utah.
The most recent victim jumped last Thursday, adding to the more than 1,300 people who have plunged to their deaths since the bridge opened in 1937, making it the most popular suicide site in America and perhaps the world.
Board spokeswoman Mary Currie said a meeting of the 19-member agency set for Feb. 25 could result in the most formal study of the unwieldy issue since the early 1970s. A look at the problem in 1998-99 focused mostly on past studies, she said, and a proposed suicide barrier design was rejected as not "totally effective."
SUICIDES CONTINUE
Even as the death toll from the stunning orange-red structure has steadily increased over the years, officials have rejected calls for a suicide barrier, often for aesthetic reasons. But there are other considerations as well, officials say.
"Because it is a historic structure there are considerations with anything that we put on the bridge," Middlebrook said in an interview. "It also has huge technical considerations, particularly related to wind."
Money is also an issue, she said. Even with a one-way $5 toll, the bridge is operating at a deficit.
Over the years officials have made moves against suicides, including adding crisis counseling telephones on the bridge in 1994. Bridge patrols starting in 1996. The span also has security cameras.
But all of these countermeasures have not stopped the steady flow of desperate people from jumping off. Only a tiny handful have survived.
One of the members of the Golden Gate Bridge board, San Francisco city legislator Tom Ammiano, plans a separate public hearing on the issue, his office said on Monday.
One of the new movies reviving the debate, "Joy of Life," about the history of suicides off the bridge, premiered at the Sundance festival.
Another filmmaker, Eric Steel, annoyed bridge officials this month by revealing that he recorded more than a dozen people plunging to their death last year. He declined to discuss the production, saying he is talking about it with bridge district authorities.
Post Election Selection Syndrome
hold on, Post Election Selection Trauma? Whatever PEST
Charge 'em 17-cents a jump. It's win-win...
Suicide is a tragedy. However, if one erects some sort of "suicide barrier", a truly suicidal person will find another way.
since most are liberal........put in a diving board
Can someone post this over on DU?
They seem to be suicidal tonight thratening to send 100's over here if we ZOT one of them!
LOL
Oh, yeah. That'll be productive.
Hypocrites.
Let them jump! It is safe (for others), unlike jumping from a high-rise
San Francisco doesn't want to stop suicide, you see. San Francisco wants to stop suicides they have to clean up.
When I once visited that wacky city,I walked out to the middle of the bridge.(wife was in a meeting) I was just about there when a couple bike riders rode up behind me and caught me by surprise and scared the you know what out of me...it's a long way to tipperarie let me tell ya...
All I've every seen on the subject is talk. I never hear anything about action.
I was going to say charge ten bucks to walk on the bridge. Most libs already spent their last ten on qualudes, lithium, or some other anti-psychotic. If they haven't spent it on their last hit of crack.
Add in a suicide tax to pay for the board...
What is a ZOT anyway?
What did he wear the second time, steel toed boots?
Doncha just hate it when a bridge commits suicide?
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