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.
How about instead of nets, we instead install a functioning mental health care system. This has ‘put bulletproof vests on school kids’ written all over it.
Why not both haha. But yes I agree. 2k people killing themselves off this since it’s open is insane
This says 4000 people died by suicide in California in one year. 2k people over almost 100 years isn’t crazy. These nets won’t make a dent in the yearly total.
The question is how many of those suicides were conducted by jumping off the bridge. And don’t say “they’d just choose another way to end themselves”. Studies and historical evidence shows that making suicide even slightly less convenient to perform actually does save lives. People get fixated on a method that seems easy. When that method is no longer easy, it gives them a chance to not go through with it.
Now ask yourself if we had proper quality healthcare for this, how many of those 2,000 would still be with us- vs. if we had nets.
I guarantee every one of them would have found another way.
Mental health care, but also better wealth distribution/quality of living for everyone.
Yeah, all the mental health care in the world doesn’t mean jack shit when you’re living paycheck to paycheck your entire life.
Mental health care professionals and their shills will of course say otherwise, though.
It’s always about the money.
Rofl, make it a very hungry one please (that’s s colour, right?).
Actually, make it like an eco terrorist type of thing, just attaching random shit that is causing loss is various habitats & ecosystems around the world. That would be pretty cool, like gleefully look at the news ‘Let’s see what the unstoppable Dragonzilla destroyed balanced or rescued today.’
The US government is going to do literally everything it can other than provide universal Healthcare until the country collapses.
This reminds me of the time San Francisco decided to do something about it’s human-feces-in-the-BART-escalator-wells problem, not by making public restrooms available to unsheltered folk, but building stupid awnings to keep people from pooping inside. The awnings cost more than the toilets would have and people just pooped on the sidewalks instead. ℹ️🫶🌉😀
Curious since I’m not familiar, how do the awnings prevent this? I went to SF a few years ago and there was a giant pile of human shit every 4 blocks so I’m not too surprised.
They basically close off the street level entrance when the transit isn’t running. The escalators used to be open at the top and closed at the bottom during off hours, making a lovely little private pooping tunnel. The city budget people didn’t GAF about the bio hazard or human dignity issues, they just didn’t like that all the excrement kept breaking the escalators.
Old article from before they implemented them (the article mentions the budget proposal being $4 million, it’s turned into $64 million and counting).
Friedenbach balked at the canopy proposal. “I find it interesting that they’re spending this much money on canopies when they could be using it to keep their bathrooms open.” More so, the money could be used for keeping the high-traffic drop-in centers operational. A few years back, San Francisco, under former-mayor Gavin Newsom’s authority, sought to cut over a million dollars in funding for many of the city’s highest-traffic drop-in centers. The Coalition for Homelessness wouldn’t stand for it. “We’d already seen almost half of the centers close,” Friedenbach recalled, “so we figured out how many pounds of feces the public facilities kept off the street.” Friedenbach and company estimated that the cost of cutting back or getting rid of drop-in centers altogether would be over 58,000 pounds of human feces on the streets of San Francisco.
[…]
Regarding the four million dollars spent on the canopy proposal, Friedenbach said, “You could capture a large amount of feces [with bathrooms], instead of the one shit a night you might be staving off with this.”
Old article from before they implemented them (the article mentions the budget proposal being $4 million, it’s turned into $64 million and counting).
$4 million for one canopy.
FTA:
The canopy, still in prototype form, would be designed and built over the next two years at a cost of almost four million dollars, with the first installation scheduled for 2015 at the 19th Street station in Oakland.
The project is expected to cost $4 million per entrance.
https://www.ktvu.com/news/bart-seeks-public-opinion-about-planned-improvements-for-sf-stations
Odd, I lived in the Bay Area for years and never once saw a pile of human excrement in the city.
It must be a fairly recent phenomenon then. I was there in 2022 and it was quite sad to see the amount of people left homeless around the city.
Reminds me of that Bojack Horseman poem.
"But this is it, the deed is done silence drowns the sound. Before I leaped I should’ve seen the view from halfway down.
I really should’ve thought about the view from halfway down. I wish I could’ve known about the view from halfway down—"
The weak breeze whispers nothing
The water screams sublime
His feet shift, teeter-totter
Deep breath, stand back, it’s time
Toes untouch the overpass
Soon he’s water bound
Eyes locked shut but peek to see
The view from halfway down
A little wind, a summer sun
A river rich and regal
A flood of fond endorphins
Brings a calm that knows no equal
You’re flying now
You see things much more clear than from the ground
It’s all okay, it would be
Were you not now halfway down
Thrash to break from gravity
What now could slow the drop
All I’d give for toes to touch
The safety back at top
But this is it, the deed is done
Silence drowns the sound
Before I leaped I should’ve seen
The view from halfway down
I really should’ve thought about
The view from halfway down
I wish I could’ve known about
The view from halfway down
Love the NIMBY ass “we don’t want effective barriers to keep people from jumping because then we cant see the view, so put in an invisible torture device that will horribly maim and punish people already so far gone they’ve decided to end it” approach. Really sums up San Francisco. Why don’t they just install a fucking Suicide Booth at each end of the bridge. They clearly aren’t after stopping attempts, they just don’t want to look at it. Easier to find a corpse in the human fishing net 20 feet down than trolling the bay.
Exactly. I’m sorry for their view, which is an undeniably beautiful view, isn’t as nice and I’m sorry that the historic bridge is less attractive now, but this is going to stop people from dying for fuck’s sake!
Some people would see the nets - a lifesaving device put there by the sheer force and willpower of a community who care so deeply about helping people survive their worst struggles that they pushed the powers that be to design, construct, and pay for it to be put in place and save human lives - and find that a really fucking beautiful sight.
