Installing safety nets on the Golden Gate Bridge has led to a 73% reduction in suicides, according to new research.
The number of people jumping to their deaths from the San Francisco landmark has rapidly declined in the 12 months since safety nets were installed, reveals the study.
Researchers say their findings, published online in the journal Injury Prevention, highlight the importance of barriers to prevent suicides.
“Early evidence indicates that the installation of safety nets on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco has been successful in reducing the number of suicides at the bridge,” study author Dr. Sangsoo Shin said.
The bridge, like so many others across the world, was a notorious suicide hotspot. The installation of safety nets to prevent suicide by jumping was completed in January last year along the entire length of the span.
Work on the project commenced in 2018 but faced numerous construction delays, as well as resistance from protestors who didn’t want to alter the landmark, arguing that people seeking to end their lives would find other ways in any case, or jump down to the nets, and then jump again to their deaths.
To evaluate whether the safety nets were working as intended, researchers studied the change in suicide rates at the bridge during three periods: before (January 2000 to July 2018), during (August 2018 to December 2023), and after installation (January 2024 to December 2024).
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Because staff and volunteers at the bridge are trained to intervene when someone is showing signs of a suicidal crisis, the research team also examined whether the three periods were linked to changes in the number of times a third party intervened to prevent suicide.
During the entire study period, there were 681 confirmed suicides and 2,901 interventions by a third party.
There were 2.48 suicides per month before installation of the safety nets, 1.83 during installation, and 0.67 after installation.
During the installation of the nets, suicides declined by 26% and after installation by 73%. Also during installation, the number of interventions by a third party increased by 75% and after installation by 34%.
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In cases where someone falls into the nets 20 feet below the bridge deck, which are made of stainless steel and designed to be painful to land on, teams of trained professionals stand ready to perform rescues, Golden Gate Bridge.org wrote.
District staff have been coordinating and training with local fire departments and law enforcement agencies to respond to net rescues in a timely manner and with minimal disruption to traffic. Thus far, the interagency teams have performed several successful rescues from the net using existing personnel and equipment.
The researchers say the study on the effectiveness of the newly installed nets provides “early but clear evidence” that they are associated with an “immediate and substantial reduction” in suicides at the site.
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“There are many high-risk places around the world where people die by jumping from heights,” said Dr. Shin, of the University of Melbourne, Australia. “Our study provides further evidence to policymakers that barriers are highly effective means of reducing suicide at bridges.”
It also demonstrates how the intuitive thinking behind the protestors’ seemingly-reasonable criticism was nevertheless unfounded, a reminder that things that may seem logical to the thinker are often a result, as Daniel Kahneman laid out in his famous book Thinking Fast and Slow, of coming to a conclusion without evidence and then deducing “backwards” to find a way to prove one’s pre-conceived belief correct.
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