Suicide bridge

This article is about bridges from which people commit suicide. For the novel, see Suicide Bridge.

A suicide bridge is a bridge used frequently by people to end their lives, most typically by jumping off and into the water or ground below. A fall from the height of a tall bridge into water may be fatal, although some people have survived jumps from high bridges such as the Golden Gate Bridge.[1] However, significant injury or death is far from certain; numerous studies report minimally injured persons who died from drowning.[2]

To reach such locations, those with the intention of ending their lives must often walk long distances to reach the point where they finally decide to jump. For example, some individuals have traveled over the 4.46-mile-long (7.18 km) San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge by car in order to jump from the Golden Gate Bridge.[3]

  1. ^ Koopman, John (November 2, 2005). "LETHAL BEAUTY / No easy death: Suicide by bridge is gruesome, and death is almost certain. The fourth in a seven-part series on the Golden Gate Bridge barrier debate". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved June 3, 2014.
  2. ^ Stephanian, Dylan (December 2019). Outcomes in suicidal bridge jumping in the Lower Mainland (MSc thesis). University of British Columbia. doi:10.14288/1.0387208.
  3. ^ Friend, Tad (October 13, 2003). "Jumpers: The fatal grandeur of the Golden Gate Bridge". The New Yorker. Vol. 79, no. 30. p. 48.