Basically I see this as yet another justification for CalTrans upping the toll another buck or two.
The problem with this thinking, IMNSHO, is that it ignores the real societal costs that suicide can bring with it.
Suicide by cop, bus and train all happen. And all have huge psychological costs for the innocents who get used in these situations. Preventing suicide is not just about saving the individual, but about preventing those other injuries associated with it. Which does make it a legitimate societal concern.
If you want to talk about legalized suicide, or physician assisted euthanasia, that’s a different kettle of fish. But the implication behind your statement that you’re the only person who would be affected by your decision to commit suicide is one I take exception to - it might be true for an individual. It’s not true across the board, however.
I take your point. I really do. But it seems to me that you are adding a layer that is not necessary for my position to be valid. “Suicide by cop” is not the definition of suicide. It is one thing that people do. One could easily make the point that no action by an individual is without societal repercussions. Where do you draw the line? What if I dress as a monster on Halloween and scare a child so that she has nightmares for life? Do we outlaw scary costumes?
My point is that when it comes down to it, our lives are our own and whether or not to end them is no one else’s business.
And I do see your point. I don’t entirely agree with your conclusions, but I see your point.
I know that suicide by cop accounts for a very small portion of the total suicides out there. Even adding in suicide by bus or train, the two other major means I can think of where suicide, in my view, goes from just the taking of one’s life into an assault on the mental health of a complete stranger, we’re still talking at most, I think, 5% of all known suicides.
I’ve seen some of the costs that people face when they are trapped into taking a life because someone else wanted to commit suicide, but lacked the will do to it themselves. It does go on for a lifetime. It can destroy lives. This isn’t a child given nightmares for the rest of their life, but an adult who can’t sleep - at all. With all the attendent damage and chaos that brings.
I don’t want to bring up the canard “If it saves one life, it’s worth it,” because I agree that’s the sort of arguement that can be used to justify most any kind of abrogation of personal rights to the state. I do believe that it is a legitimate concern for the state to try to prevent those costs, for that less than one in twenty suicide who does choose such a selfish way to do the deed.
If you want to ignore that argument, though, as being based on too small a proportion of suicides (A valid view, though not one I share.) to base public policy upon, I’d ask that you consider the medical costs of failed suicides. Many suicides are attempted drug overdoses, which usually leave massive liver and kidney damage in their wake.
I don’t know what the ratio of successful to unsuccessful suicide attempts might be - I believe that it’s less than one to one by a wide margin, but I don’t know. Here’s a link to a study at the CDC for Oregon suicide attempts among teens. I don’t want to extrapolate too much from this, but I think that within one order of magnitude, it’s likely to be accurate enough for the general population for the purposes of this debate.
According to that study there were a total of 3896 suicide attepts that were recognized or labelled as such during the years investigated. Of those attempts only 123 were successful. Just over 3% of the attempts were fatal. The other 97% had some damage that had to be dealt with, ranging from stomach pumping, to the more extreme. Of all attempts, the most common method is listed as being poisoning by drugs, with 2857 attempts. That’s just under 75% of the attempts.
IANAD, but my understanding is that life-long dialysis is often required in the wake of an attempted OD suicide. That’s not free, and often in the US becomes solely the responsibility of the gov’t - because many people who attempt suicide don’t have health insurance, or quickly use up their non-emergency coverage if they do have it. Loss of liver function is the same sort of thing, only more expensive - and often ends up with a new person on the organ waiting list, as well.
Any fears you might have about the state claiming it has a right to keep you alive pales, in my mind, to the fears I have about the state giving itself the right to judge who intended a suicide, and so there’s no need to give them medical assistance, when available.
These factors combine to leave me with the conclusion that preventing suicide and suicide attempts is a legitimate concern for society, or the state. That leaves a lot of room for debate, however, on just what methods are best suited to that goal.
Now, the iconoclastic solution that I suspect you and I might both find elegantly tempting (though I’m sure it would never fly with the general public) would be to offer suicide counseling: Combination of suicide prevention counselling for those who want it, with how-to-help for how to set up a flawless suicide for those who want it.
(I roomed for a year in college with a chap who spent most days talking about how easy suicide would be… towards the end of that situation I was biting my lips to keep from shouting: “Stop talking about it, and just do it, dammit!” I am not a good candidate for working in a suicide prevention hotline. At all.)
I hope the OP doesn’t mind this hijack. It’s not quite on topic, I know. But it’s not really off topic, either - considering it’s a discussion about whether the state should try to prevent suicide, and what methods should be allowed in pursuit of that goal - seems to fit in rather nicely with the situation in SF.
OtakuLoki You have given me a lot to think about. (I’m not sure it is a hijack either, for the reasons you mentioned.)
If I attempted suicide and failed I would not expect the state to provide my medical care, for the same reasons that if a rescue from a failed expidition on Mt. Mckinley (sorry, forgot the new name) should be provided free of charge. I understood the risks and I accept the consequences. I suppose that I am saying your logic seems circular to me. You are asserting that suicide has a cost to society and justifying that by saying that it has a cost to society.
Please excuse me if my reading of your post was shallow. It takes me quite some time to type a response. I will read it further and caveat if necessaary.
No problem, Contrapuntal. I like a good debate, myself.
I think I forgot one point in the summary of my arguments - my believe that prevention monies are worth 10X the amount of cure monies. Thus, by proving there are costs to suicide and suicide attempts, and assuming prevention is cheaper, it’s the preferred place to spend limited public monies. Other than that, I think you’ve got a fair summary of my post.
There are two problems I have with this statement.
- What you might logically expect, and what society has chosen to try to guarantee, may not be the same thing. At the moment the legal climate here in the US makes it mandatory for medical care to be given to anyone who comes to the provider in extemis. The cause of such need is irrelevant. And often there’s no time for an emergency situation to get that kind of information, anyways.
Complicating things further, when someone is unconscious there are other people who become, automatically, the ones who make the decisions about health care. Parents, spouses, and other family will often have a completely different view of what’s expected than you, or a potential suicide might. And if the patient cannot make their wishes known, these others have the legal authority to make decisions for the patient.
- According to the SF Gate article about suicide being preventable - the overwhelming majority of suicide survivors want to continue surviving. Do you have the intestinal fortitude to tell a 20 yo girl with no working kidneys that she’s got to poison herself with metabolic poisons, because she destroyed her kidneys trying to commit suicide? It would be kinder to shoot her.
In the gut.
It’s that huge Smug cloud over SF that drives people to it 
No, there should be no barrier. However, the "eyesore’ is a stupid argument. Here’s the point I want to make- if dudes are prevented for killing themselves on the bridge, they will kill themselves somewhere else. Now, let’s say they just go to another bridge- are we going to spend billions of dollars building barriers on EVERY bridge? :dubious:
Or worse, they might decide to step in front of a train, thus giving a man who wants to live - the engineer- a life or nitemares, stress and horror.
Or “suicide by cop” which also traumatizes a police officer.
Or, worse yet, they decide to take their family with them, by shooting or fire or soemthing. Nice thing about bridge jumpings- few try and take their family with them.
Or, the worst is suicide by car, accomplished by driving you car into high-speed oncoming traffic, thsu allowing you to kill some poor dudes who just wanted to get home to their families.
No, bridge jumping is a good way to go, once you have chosen to go (and sure, often that decision is a bad one, but still, it is your to make, IMHO). There is no chance of accidentally taking someone with you, and little chance *your choice * to end your own life will make someone elses life into a nitemare of guilt.
Not to mention hundreds of buildings that create a much longer fall onto a much harder surface.
The last year? How about, since it was built. scr4 has it nailed - despite all the discussions of “humane” this and that which have been going on for decades, any action that ever occurs (and my opinion after hearing this issue stirred up repeatedly decade after decade) is that the bridge district will happily spend enough money to study the issue as many times as we want them too, but they’ll only spend enough to build something when there’s a payoff.
[nitpick]
Caltrans has nothing to do with the Golden Gate Bridge, which is run by the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District (which also operates buses and ferries). That’s why the GG Bridge has diffent tolls from the other Bay Area bridges, which are administered by Caltrans.
[/nitpick]
One of the reasons that the Golden Gate Bridge is so popular for would-be suicides is its accessibilty to pedestrians. The only other Bay Area bridges with walkways are the Dumbarton Bridge (which keeps fairly low to the water and is unsuitable for a “grand gesture” jump) and the new Alfred Zampa Memorial Bridge over the Carquinez Strait. AFAIK there are no special suicide-prevention barriers on either of these spans, but they are not noted as “suicide magnets” like the GG Bridge is.
I favor the barrier only because in its absence the bridge is closed to pedestrian/bicycle traffic from 10 pm till dawn, (i speculate because it’s harder to rescue those who jump at night, but have no firm ground for this). I was thus unwillingly stuck in Marin County (not as bad as "stuck in Lodi)) one night, notwithstanding a willingess to bike 20 miles home.
Let’em be. If someone uses poison/pills or “attempts” to slash their wrists or stands out on a ledge where they can be seen, all they probably want is attention. If, however they strap C4 to themselves, puts a gun to their head or wants to jump off of the GGB at midnight, they really want to, or so they think! Let them. If they haven’t been talked out of it by the time they get there, they won’t be. The mindset of “if it just saves one life, it’s worth it” is hogwash, and I’m being polite. First, it is not our job, as fellow citizens, to stop them if they have made an independent decision. Second, it is not our job as a government to “take care of those that can’t take care of themselves”, who died and made us God. Third, it is not our financial nor is it our societal obligation to “child proof” the universe, and I for one, don’t want to pay for it. “But, but, (hand wringing, wailing, gnashing of teeth go here), (sob, sob) someone has to SAVE them, and you’re mean and mean people suck! If it just (wail loudly, look indignant, sob pitifully) saves one life it is (oh, sob, sob) worth it!” Really? Are you sure? You would strain at a gnat and swallow a camel? If you really have those sentiments, then let’s look at the logical (notice the word logical, here) extension of that philosophy. First, why would we even start with the GGB as it is a VERY small source of the loss of life in this country? If we are going to spend our (euphemism for ‘my’) money it should be on something that goes for the low hanging fruit where the most people could be saved for the least amount of effort ($). Automobile accidents are the largest single accidental loss of life in this country. We could have cars that have the ability to figure out if you are too stupid to drive or not, and not let you drive if you are (would be a lot less traffic). Heck, they can park themselves and tell you if you are running up on someone and will put the brakes on for you (and now you twits can get by with texting and driving). “Surely this is possible and if it just saves one life it would be worth it (heavy sigh) and be a very REASONABLE thing to do as a society. Heck, it wouldn’t cost us anything at all; the government can just mandate it.” Of course, these minor features are gimmicks to sell cars or they are on very high-end models. To reach the point that the car uses Assimov’s “Laws of Robotics” to “protect you” from yourself (look it up, I’m not going to explain it), would require that the feature not be able to be circumvented (eliminate freedom of choice, that’s always a big obstacle to getting your way) and that it be absolutely “failsafe” (that it is redundant i.e. 2x the cost, not to mention the possibility of litigation due to the user circumventing it or it being hit by a meteor because the car didn’t know how to get out of the way). “This shouldn’t cost too much, but then we can have the government subsidize it, so it will cost less, until the unknowing masses are able to truly understand the need for this.” Of course by this time no one except the very rich and corporations, who should be paying for this anyway, would be able to drive and we (the common people; that is sheep, serfs, indentured servants etc.) would have to use mass transit because that would be all that we could afford, but that is the secret goal anyway, force everyone into MT so that we can lower our nation’s carbon footprint. “We should all be glad, that as a society, that we could accomplish this. Actually, anyone that doesn’t think that this is right should be detained and given a mental evaluation to see why they don’t understand this, because it is just so obvious, that if it saves just one life, it is worth it!”
This is exactly what I came in to say, and plus, if it deters even one person from ending their life, it is worth it.
ETA: Also, saves traffic snarls due to no need for a rescue attempt other than to disentangle some person from the net. Who could then get psychological help.
I’d be against any said barrier.
I am supportive of a state paid suicide hotline and as many signs on the bridge as necessary to not go unnoticed by potential jumpers.
What’s the point of a suicide barrier against zombies? They’re dead already.
I would vote against the barriers but for direct to suicide hotline phones along the bridge.
The only bridges that I am in favour of barriers for are those that cross over another highway.
Damnit I’m usually better at spotting Suicide Zombies.
Just bring back the safety net used during construction. If someone is dedicated enough to crawl to the edge of the net and jump again, so be it. Otherwise, they crawl to the end or are picked up by rescuers.
To sound even more callous: Part of what makes The Golden Gate Bridge so iconic is the fact that many suicide attempts - sucessful and unsuccessful - have been made off of The Golden Gate Bridge.
Not unprecedented. They recently put up suicide barriers on the West Gate Bridge in Melbourne, Australia. While the number of suicides on the bridge has been drastically reduced, I couldn’t tell you whether suicides in other areas of Melbourne have increased as an offset.