I’ve seen an ad for the first season of CSI on TNN, and one of the shows apparently deals with a jumper. The investigator says in the commercial that it wasn’t a suicide because “look – eyeglasses. Jumpers take off their glasses.”
Where does this bit of info come from? Is this legit, or some made-up saw used to make the investigator seem smart? And if they do, just WHY do they?? To not see where they’re going? To not see their life flashing before their eyes?
I saw the same show and wondered the same thing. So I started to do some research in various sites. I could find nothing to back this up so it must be made up to make the show interesting.
I wear eyeglasses and, while I have no intention of hurling myself to my doom, it frankly would never have even occured to me to take off my glasses. Of course now if I ever do jump off a building, I’m definitely gonna leave my glasses on, just to mess with the forensics guys’ heads. Maybe I’ll plant a cryptic note in my pocket too: “What a discovery! Must let world know! BE CAREFUL: THEY may be on to me!!!”
Well, I doubt anyone has had the opportunity to ask them. :-p
If I were going to jump (having unfortunately been at that place in life before), it’d be for comfort. Many suicidal people go to great pains to assure comfort, or even just symbolism… but if you are very depressed and considering jumping, and you get to the edge, it would be an almost subconvious move to put down what you are carrying and maybe take off your glasses.
Then again, it is an incredibly broad and silly generalization. The glasses could have come off in a fight, or an argument. For that matter, someone who has worn glasses their entire life or was almost blind without them may leave them on.
Also, there are various types of suicides. Some are planned in detail long ahead of time, with the means and a date determined, letters left or sent, etc. The individual may have a specific scene or vision they want to fulfill, wearing certain clothes, etc. Others are passionate, maybe rooted in longer term issues but carried out from a trigger. There is no predicting what the person may do before this.
In the end, imagine going to bed.
Hasn’t been a particuarly helpful answer, edging around the heart of your question, but I don’t think there is a significant statistic like that. It certainly wouldn’t hold up in court beyond a reasonable doubt. There may be some police/detective/investigator assumption attatched, as in the show, but like most of those kinds of things, challenge them to cite…
Or I could be just flat-ass wrong.
It doesn’ make any sense to me either. I’ve worn glasses since I was eleven, and I sometimes forget to take them off before showering, and often fall asleep with them still on. Jumping off a building sounds scary. Jumping off a building without my glasses sounds absolutely terrifying.
I remember when my dad and I were going to go bungee jumping, we stopped at a sports store on the way to buy cords to hold our glasses on.
As I read the original post, I envisioned myself walking to the edge of a roof to throw myself off and I glimpsed myself removing my glasses (which I’ve worn since 3rd grade). I think when someone is doing something so extreme, extraneous thoughts can intrude.
I’ll take off my glasses because if not, they might shatter on impact and put out my eye. Not that your corpse would care, nor should you in your suicidal state, but habit dies hard. It’s like finding your phone has no dialtone but then picking it up to call the telephone company. Duh!
I am hard pressed to believe that every jumper removes his/her glasses, but I would not be suprised to find that the great majority do.
Hey, you want to see where you’re going, don’t you?
Yeah, I saw that episode of CSI, and my BS detector went off…
I wear glasses, and I can’t imagine taking them off before I jump… seems to me that glasses would be the LAST thing on your mind before you jump!
Is there any value in considering what eye glass wearers do before bungee jumping ? different mind set, I suppose. Just.
I don’t know why but I seem to think those who shoot themselves in the head would also remove their glasses first, perhaps that’s a Hollywood influence, though ?
To paraphrase Terry Pratchett: “The use of more than one exclamation mark is a sure sign of a diseased mind.” So I think they’d figure out you committed suicide after all. 
Maybe the Ground has a problem hitting people with glasses?
(ouch, ouch, enough already)
have you considered rec specs?
Otherwise, of course you’d take your glasses off–they might get scratched!
On Japanese fiction (including TV), jumpers always take off their shoes. Is this myth told elsewhere? A cliche method for faking a suicide is to knock someone unconscious, remove the shoes and throw him off a cliff/bridge/building. And place the shoes neatly near the edge.
Now reading glasses, I could see that argument. Someone who is surprised and assaulted then thrown to their death might have reading glasses on due to what they were already doing. While a suicide almost surely wouldn’t.
It might be so you don’t have to look when you jump, but kind of suspect its’ like when some people strip down to meditate as kind of a preparatory thing along the lines of removing external stuff untill its just you.
I’ve seen the commercial. Count me among the people whose BS detectors went off. People like myself, who have worn glasses for most of their life and can’t see a thing without them, probably wouldn’t take them off before jumping.
People who need their glasses for basic vision come to think of the glasses as an extension of their bodies. You don’t even think about your glasses, unless they’re dirty and need cleaning or you have to take them off to take a shower or go to bed.
People who only need glasses for reading might take them off, however.
I thought the exact same thing. Even though I wear contacts, if I ever decide to jump off of a building (which I never plan to do) I will wear my glasses instead.
Lemoyne Snyder, in his classic text Homicide Investigation, addresses the habits of people committing suicide, and signs an investigator should look for when trying to determine if an apparent suicide might instead be a murder.
While I don’t recall anything about eyeglasses, he observed that people very frequently pull away an article of clothing before stabbing themselves, rather than stabbing themselves through it. The point seems to be that suicide is often not a particularly rational act, and people act as though they don’t want to get their shirt sdamaged because they might want to wear them again. It strikes me that the business about removing one’s glasses might be a similar form of behavior. So yeah, a lot of jumpers might take off their glasses so that they won’t fall off or get scratched.
But, it wouldn’t bother you, if you could keep your glasses on?
Regarding the OP, I don’t think it’s true. Some probably do, either out of force of habit when doing something that might damage their glasses or because they’re saying “Screw the World. Screw these glasses! I’m sick of wearing glasses!” Others probably lose them on the way down (many jumpers tumble) or upon impact.
Maybe they take off their glasses so they can’t see the ground as clearly as they smack into it. I imagine that suicidal people would want to make the death as easy as possible.