Golden Gate Bridge - Suicides - Prevention costs

[iceknight]

http://nbcnews.to/1fSZxoa

So they are going to spend about $ 71 million (5+66) to prevent people from dying during their suicide attempts. Wonder if some could be spent on preventing people with suicidal tendencies with mental health counseling and help with the remediation of the problems they could be facing.

What are your thoughts?

If your only thoughts are going to be that those who choose to die should die, please save your breath. I don't personally know anyone who committed suicide but I feel/think it is a very complex decision (especially the solo suicide) that some people choose to do, most likely because they do not get help in time.

[How should the human society approach this, and how should it approach it in today's world. Outlawing it like certain Sharia law texts (cue that mars mission discussion) does not make clear sense to me and that just means more unnecessary regulation/laws.]

[Stillriledup]

I know this may be off the beaten path a bit, but if it saves one life of a person who wasnt really committing suicide but was being tossed off the bridge by someone else who wanted to make it LOOK like a suicide, than it was probably worth it if that person survives.

[iceknight]

I know this may be off the beaten path a bit, but if it saves one life of a person who wasnt really committing suicide but was being tossed off the bridge by someone else who wanted to make it LOOK like a suicide, than it was probably worth it if that person survives. hmm. valid point, thanks for perspective!

[Stillriledup]

hmm. valid point, thanks for perspective!

No problem, i've been known to come up with a valid point for every 100 points i make. :D

[iceknight]

No problem, i've been known to come up with a valid point for every 100 points i make. :D I know I had to read the user name 2-3 times and wipe my glasses and read it again to make sure it said SRU. :D

[Stillriledup]

I know I had to read the user name 2-3 times and wipe my glasses and read it again to make sure it said SRU. :D

I did too! :D

[NJ Stinks]

Went up the Eiffel Tower about 20 years ago and they had nets all over the place to catch jumpers at each level. Don't know what it cost the French. But I find it hard to believe it cost $66M+ to do the same with the Golden Gate Bridge. :confused:

[cj's dad]

The GG Bridge authority is recouping some of their losses with the toll collected prior to a jump !

[Tom]

The GG Bridge authority is recouping some of their losses with the toll collected prior to a jump !

Now that is deep!

[cj's dad]

Now that is deep!

You know Tom, if it's a one way toll like some bridges such as the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, it's a money making proposition.

[Grits]

My thoughts are that if someone truly wants to end their life, they will do it. Too, if they fail the first time, often there's a second attempt, and as one of my best friend's who is a psychologist notes, "they will succeed and not all have decades of mental illness". She's been a counselor for many years.

Sometimes, it can be well thought out and planned. An elderly woman, age, late 70s that I knew was addicted to valium, prescribed to her for years for a pinched nerve in her neck. She had enough of the drug and the pain. One night, she went into the bathroom, cut both wrists with a razorblade, went and laid down on her bed, and bled out. All the way through the thickness of the mattress. She was found by her husband.

A young student of the hippie era when long hair was the thing was told by his mom at dinner, "you will do as I say, get your hair cut tomorrow after school." She left that evening and went to church for choir practice. Her husband called her to come home, "there's been an accident". She arrived to police cars and EMTs. The son had put his dad's shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. His dad cleaned his brain matter and blood stained bedroom walls and ceiling on his knees, and on a ladder, for days.

[davew]

My thoughts are Soylent Green - death centers where people go to die, rather than comas in hospital beds for weeks...

[cj's dad]

Wife's sister committed suicide. leslie was an RN; the story goes that she was diagnosed with cancer and would have been the 2nd daughter of 5 to be so diagnosed. She injected insulin under her nails on one of her hands,. She did not want the family to know that she had taken her own life,. The autopsy proved otherwise. She was in her 30's. my wife later died of cancer. Another sister- in law- is battling pancreatic cancer at the present time. I have seen first hand how devastating suicide is to a family.

[Grits]

That is terribly hard, Dennis. Terribly, terribly so. :(

[JustRalph]

For 66 million, you could employee ten officers on each side of the bridge for 50k a piece for the next 25 yrs...........

That's 24 x7 using 80 employees. Yet, they're going to install a net.........?

Btw, both ideas are stupid. There are other bridges........

[OntheRail]

Instead of a net they should put curved top fencing down the walkways... could do that for a heck of a lot less then netting.... or just dome the walkway in with wire mesh. Oh wait that would ruin the aesthetics of the bridge. A black net will better blend into the shadows of the span. But what's gonna keep them from rolling off the edge of the net... it better be a sticky net like flypaper.

[jballscalls]

We have a bridge here in town called the Suicide Bridge (it's proper name is Vista Bridge I believe). But there is a group of volunteer ladies and gentlemen who just walk along the sidewalk and they've had some decent success talking with people who had gone there to commit suicide. Sometimes just putting a little space or time between the person and the act can help stop it.

It's such an awful thing.

[iceknight]

Went up the Eiffel Tower about 20 years ago and they had nets all over the place to catch jumpers at each level. Don't know what it cost the French. But I find it hard to believe it cost $66M+ to do the same with the Golden Gate Bridge. :confused:I feel that there is more organized corruption in the US. inflated estimates, etc what not... but so far it is still a "feeling" based on having looked at lot of contract bid documents at local/state level. And based on hearing national level large contracts.

Coming to this particular issue, they are still only doing symptomatic treatment, instead of root cause treatment..That's my gripe.


Regarding Grits' comment that if someone truly wanted to.... yes, they might. But I think there are also others who sometimes might go into impulsively but could be talked out of it and shown a better path.

Just realized something else, somehow, the term "bridgejumper" which I (we) so often use for Large Show pool races, did not at all come to my mind at all.

[Robert Goren]

For 66 million, you could employee ten officers on each side of the bridge for 50k a piece for the next 25 yrs...........

That's 24 x7 using 80 employees. Yet, they're going to install a net.........?

Btw, both ideas are stupid. There are other bridges........ Not to mention parking lots. In my 20 years in the parking business, I dealt with 6 jumpers(all died) and about that many who were talked down by somebody(not me).The one that got to me was a UNL college sophomore who taken the bus home(a small town) for Christmas. He rode the bus back walked over the garage, went to the top and jumped. There was new snow so we knew that he hadn't milled around up there. Must have been thinking about it all the way back on the bus ride. A few minor changes in my life and it could have been me 30 years earlier. I made quite few of those roundtrips bus trips home. Coming back to school was never fun. Here they end up in newspaper and local TV which practically guarantees someone else will try in the next few days.