Has anyone survived the jump? How high up can you jump into water and still survive?
There’s this great column published in the Chicago Reader. Check it out.
I read a quote from someone who jumped off the bridge–they said “after I jumped off, I realized that I really only had one problem in life–I had just jumped off the golden gate bridge.”
This article from the New Yorker has brief quotes from three survivors of Golden Gate jumps (and is pretty interesting about the bridge’s allure for suicides in general)
Here’s a few who didn’t make it- check out the guy who goes for the backwards dive. The documentary this is culled from is pretty morbidly fascinating- IFC or Sundance recently showed it.
With respect, no one ever dies from jumping off the bridge!!!
It’s the part about landing in the Pacific Ocean that is the killer. 
Guns don’t kill people, bleeding to death kills people.
Um, close, but no cigar. You can jump off the bridge and NOT hit the ocean, you know.
Well, Cecil’s column quotes an authority as saying that the maximum survivable velocity when impacting water is 80 m.p.h.
80 m.p.h. = 117.33 f.p.s.
Speed = acceleration X time, so an object reaches this speed after falling for 3.64 seconds.
Distance = ½at^2, so 16.1 X 13.25 = 213.31 feet.
So it looks like the Golden Gate Bridge is right about at the margin of survivability.
Good information to know in case you ever want to do a “fun jump” into water. As a kid I’ve made fun jumps of 30 - 40 feet off of bridges, piers, etc. I’ve always wondered what the limit would be.
Though not exactly the same technique as a suicidal jumper, cliff divers can get near 150 feet
A friend of a friend of mine, no less.
If you’re interested, check out The Bridge.
Blockbuster has it. I just added it to my queue.
Bi-polar disorder causes auditory hallucinations?
Just so you know what you’re getting into, it’s a very depressing film to watch. You will see people die. There’s something ghoulish about it. I was at somebody’s house when they were watching it, I didn’t find it enjoyable and left to go read a book.
I do, however, think it should be required viewing for the people who oppose an anti-suicide barrier on the GG Bridge.
Uh, yeah—I was going to bring that up, but I didn’t want to be accused of hijacking a thread. But since this thread is about to fall off page three anyway, I’ll ask: why don’t they just put up a barrier? Is it cost? Who in their right mind would be opposed to such a simple and effective deterrent?
Well, perhaps the fact that people like to see off the bridge as they drive across it? And the fact that society as a whole thinks that, if you want to jump off and die, why should we stop you?
Mainly, from what I’ve heard, it’s aestetics. And yes, The Bridge is a very disturbing documentary (and one that shouldn’t be entered into lightly, even within the first few seconds), but thought-provoking and powerful none-the-less. As someone who has been suicidal too many times to count, I learned a lot.
Is somebody who wants to kill themselves going to be stopped by a fence? I mean, it’s not like the Golden Gate Bridge is the only place you can off yourself - in fact, most ways to die are much less of a hassle.
Note that this distance will be increases when drag is taken into account.