Kevin Hines regretted jumping off San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge the moment his hands released the rail and he plunged the equivalent of 25 stories into the Pacific Ocean, breaking his back.
Hines miraculously survived his suicide attempt at age 19 in September 2000 as he struggled with bipolar disorder, one of about 40 people who survived after jumping off the bridge.
Hines, his father, and a group of parents who lost their children to suicide at the bridge relentlessly advocated for a solution for two decades, meeting resistance from people who did not want to alter the iconic landmark with its sweeping views of the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay.
On Wednesday, they finally got their wish when officials announced that crews have installed stainless-steel nets on both sides of the 1.7-mile (2.7-kilometer) bridge.
“Had the net been there, I would have been stopped by the police and gotten the help I needed immediately and never broken my back, never shattered three vertebrae, and never been on this path I was on,” said Hines, now a suicide prevention advocate. “I’m so grateful that a small group of like-minded people never gave up on something so important.”
Nearly 2,000 people have plunged to their deaths since the bridge opened in 1937.
City officials approved the project more than a decade ago, and in 2018 work began on the 20-foot-wide (6-meter-wide) stainless steel mesh nets. But the efforts to complete them were repeatedly delayed until now.
The nets — placed 20 feet (6 meters) down from the bridge’s deck — are not visible from cars crossing the bridge. But pedestrians standing by the rails can see them. They were built with marine-grade stainless steel that can withstand the harsh environment that includes salt water, fog and strong winds that often envelop the striking orange structure at the mouth of the San Francisco Bay.
Complete waste of public funds.
Removing carbon monoxide from cooking gas lines in the UK caused a massive drop in suicides. Without an easy DIY suicide machine at home people literally stopped killing themselves.
… though in America they’re probably just going to use a gun or fentanyl. Those are easy DIY suicide techniques too.
Removing carbon monoxide from cooking gas lines in the UK caused a massive drop in suicides
Did it really? I live in the US and have read that an inexpensive improvement to burners would lead to decreased indoor air pollution, but industry is against it. This other tidbit would make that resistance so much worse than it already is.
Yup, they used to use something called “town gas” which was made from coal refining. People would put their heads in the oven, turn on the gas, and wait. Quick painless death - just going to sleep. Learned it listening to the Meeting Strangers audiobook in a section about Coupling Theory.
I actually agree that these founds could instead go to prevent suicide reason - mental health, social security, affordable housing.
What idiots are downvoting this? The problem isn’t that the bridge is too high. It’s that the people who have suicided there in the past had no access to mental health care. You downvoters are not looking at the root of the problem. You really think all the suicidal people are just gonna magically cure themselves because they installed nets?
The money spent on not only the nets and installing them etc but also the lawmakers that wasted their time coming up with this idea and meeting about it etc etc is ALL a waste of public funds and could have been put to much better use towards the actual problem.
This is just Americans patting themselves on the back pretending they’re doing a good job 👏🏼
Do you have any information that contradicts the effectiveness of barriers at suicide hotspots?
Or is it just your ‘feelings’?
What sort of argument is this? Obviously if the net catches a fucking person then yeah good job nets. But the root of the problem isn’t people falling off the bridge on accident. It’s people with unaddressed mental health issues wanting to kill themselves. How about we address the mental health aspects instead of just making them jump off a different bridge or shoot themselves or any other of a million different ways to kill yourself. If I really wanna die a net on that specific bridge won’t stop me I’ll just find another way.
People will just drown instead, the net only stops people from going to that location.
True because they’ll just kill themselves another way. 2000 in almost 100 years isn’t anywhere near the other ways.
