Illegally climbing the Golden Gate bridge at dawn (2011)(nopromiseofsafety.com) |
Illegally climbing the Golden Gate bridge at dawn (2011)(nopromiseofsafety.com) |
One idea to slow down that number o fdeaths is to install a big net. It'll hurt when people land on it, and that might be enough to snap them out of the impulsive decision to end their lives.
The net would cost about $45m.
Some people might feel that spending the money on mental health services and suicide prevention services would be a better investment.
(http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/26/us/26bcjames.html?pagewant...)
Superficially it's obvious why Fresno CA has such a high suicide rate (14.8 per 100,000) - low employment, high crime, staggering drug (especially meth) addiction. But Sacramento CA has higher rates of suicide (22.7 per 100,000), and it's not as easy to work out why.
things from his post: > A slip of the foot could result in certain death. But We rolled the dice – flipped the coin. > Needing to get above the streetlights and not having time for fall protection I reminded myself to fall to the left should I slip. > https://farm6.static.flickr.com/5209/5315871803_95f74f1027_b...
Scream "this is some young kid who probably should not be doing this". Safety should always be the most important thing when doing anything like that.
Thou shalt remember the 11th commandment and keep it wholly.
Back to Joe, I found his blog and saw a picture of him setting off fireworks on top of a crane I had just climbed and jumped in the city I used to live. I kept thinking the increased security probably should have led to my arrest since setting off fireworks isn't exactly stealth and if I was property owner and found that I'd definitely be horrified enough to increase security. I tracked him down and took him out to an antenna for him to climb and photograph warning him what could happen if he kept posting so publicly. He was eventually was arrested for this:
http://www.nopromiseofsafety.com/?p=311
He was an interesting dude. Modified a car to have a skin of bottle caps all over it. He does not walk to the beat of normal society's drum.
...says the base jumper.
Consider if every road project has to pay an extra $1000 for lost cones it becomes a police problem quickly and they crack the whip hard.
Skydiving is a good way to ease into it, because you're so high it doesn't have the immediate danger that being lower to the ground, but relatively high does.
(I didn't.)
There is a history of tar and feathering (with cold tar) people that ruin it for everyone else.
0: http://englishrussia.com/2013/03/22/on-top-of-the-pyramide/#...
I'm guessing the correct choice is the concrete, but for some reason I feel like I would still prefer to go for the water...
(A 30-foot fall onto concrete might still kill you, but a 300-foot fall into water will definitely kill you. And if the fall onto concrete doesn't kill you, it will be much easier to get you the medical attention you need if you're not floating in San Francisco Bay).
Or demonstrate that things we're sure about are sometimes not quite right:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=E40...
(Fast forward to 5 mins)
300-foot fall into water will definitely kill you.
Some do survive the actual jump and impact into the bay. Some (very rarely) are even recovered and survive the entire ordeal.
90% of chance of law enforcement to be in touch with you soon, unfortunately. This is akin posting Youtube video of yourself breaking legal speed limits.
Date: February 24, 2011
You can't practically damage the bridge. You will mostly just hurt yourself if something happens. Theoretically the worst that could happen is you could fall onto a car but the damages incurred by a dead climber would be peanuts for any insurance company — people crash their cars by themselves alone all the time. And that could already happen because climbing being illegal doesn't stop the people who want to climb the bridge, as demonstrated in the article.
Of course, there's there "could" track where anything "could" happen thus it must be declared illegal before it happens, but you can extend that thinking to nearly everything until living just becomes impossible. For example, it "should be illegal to climb the big rocks on the shores because you could fall on an innocent party on a boat".
I would be inclined to reserve the illegal status for activities that actively affect other people. Stealing, mugging, murdering, manslaughtering, kidnapping, etc. Conversely, accidents just happen.
I am sorry but that is BS. I could not find any statistics about "photographed landmarks" but a quick check of any measure of tourism and this seems extremely unlikely. For starters San Francisco's tourism does not come close to NYC.
> Mining data from 35 million Flickr photos, scientists at Cornell University made some surprising discoveries: Not only did the world's most photographed cities (and the most captured landmark in each) emerge, but also so did the most common angles for shooting each place.
There are some American cities in the top twenty-five; and some Californian cities there; and San Francisco is listed at number 3, but for Union Square, not the Golden Gate Bridge.
This[1] AOL page has another list of US sights. (http://news.travel.aol.com/2009/08/27/must-snaps-americas-mo...) - they say it's the Coit Tower.
[1] A bafflingly bad page! Here's the tiny text-reading box on my display. (http://imgur.com/aRPqWr5)
1st most photographed city: New York
Landmark: Empire State Building.
Found the source[1], the golden gate bridge did not make their list of top 7 in san francisco. Which could be due to the methodology but it is important to note that there is a problem of selection bias in the article, which may artificially inflate SF's prominence. Its worth pointing out that for NYC landmarks the apple store was ranked higher than liberty island (AKA statue of liberty). Francophiles can rest easy, the Eifel Tower crushed the competition.
[1] https://www.cs.cornell.edu/~dph/papers/photomap-www09.pdf
(edit: According to the Luminosity Colour Contrast Ratio Analyser [1], the luminosity contrast ratio is 1.66:1. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines recommend a ratio of 4.5:1 [2]. That'd be #777 on #000.)
[1] http://juicystudio.com/services/luminositycontrastratio.php
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-WCAG20-20081211/#visual-audio-...
The first is purpose: those dark images really stand out on the dark page, and the text is easily ignored, creating lots of attention on the photos and their extraordinary qualities (location, location, location, not to mention some pretty colors and compositions). Face it, the text is for people who want to know how it was done, which is one tenth the importance of "pics, or it... never mind."
The second is aesthetic. The article title "Mr Strauss' masterpiece" is even darker than the text, and the blog title "No Promise of Safety" is so dark as to be almost invisible. Hence, you have to assume that all choice of dark colors was intentional, thus serving some intent of the author. The idea of hiding in the shadows and having secrets revealed is strengthened by the text color.
Thus, I feel the dark text contributed to the impact of the page and its content. Not everything has to be perfectly readable or follow all rules of design.
http://gothamist.com/2011/11/19/video_see_the_williamsburg_b...
If you enjoy these sorts of stories, you'll love watching Man on Wire -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_on_Wire
When I was young with friends in SF (we were around 12), I remember the most adrenaline pumping thing we did was walk in the muni tunnel off I think Duboce (back in 01', so I'm not sure of the right names) and we'd always climb to roof access in the condo where they lived.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/parksconservancy/sets/721576304...
I'm not sure Flickr can be considered an accurate representation of the majority of photographers.
Some Googling turned up this study, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16420711, "The association between suicide and the socio-economic characteristics of geographical areas: a systematic review". At first I thought their conclusions were clear, but I find I have difficulty understanding subsequent sentences with respect to each other. I'm afraid I would need to read the whole paper to understand exactly what their conclusions are.
Black Diamond did a great article about it, though they are going through some growing pains right now with a new website. The article was, "Daisy Chain Dangers"
You really didn't read it, did you?
Better?
People have been pushing for a net for years, but a variety of (lame) excuses keep conspiring against it. The reality is that there's no really good reason to keep from doing it...just a lot of little bad ones that seem to win.
You can take this to apply to everything from the inside of one's uterus to hurling oneself off a bridge.
Drug companies in Britain experimented by putting pills in blister packs instead of bottles and found out that suicide rates dropped dramatically. Apparently, the amount of time it took to pull each individual pill out of the blister pack was enough to make people think about what they're doing.
The same thing applies with bridges. There have been many efforts to put signs up and obstructive railings in place. They won't deter a really determined person, but they do the next best thing - the people who aren't sure are shown that it's a decision rather than a done deal. And that's what they need at that moment in time.
A short transcript[1] from the podcast agrees though, and there's a currently previous[2] and ongoing[3] research into packaging/impulsivity.
There's some other research as well that shows that restricting pack size of OTC paracetamol/acetaminophen reduces suicides, too[4]
[1] http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/05/17/why-cant-you-buy-a-bi...
[2] http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=ht...
[3] http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01118208
[4] http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fj...
They're not. This isn't a problem that you can't apply normal logic to. Instead you need to look at what works and copy that - and last-minute disruption/difficulty works.
Here is an example of a suicidal thought process, from my own experience: "I don't want to die, but given the situation I'm in I can't see any other option. I don't want to do it. I just need a reason to keep going."
When you can't find that reason, you do something fatal. The reason can be anything, the smallest thing can keep you going.
Some people kill themselves for different reasons, and I think people that have never suffered from depression have that kind of suicide in mind. The guy who kills himself rather than live with the shame of blah blah blah. (Or for the insurance money for his family.)
That's not a depression-related suicide, and I suspect they're pretty rare. Someone with depression isn't thinking that rationally. If they were, they wouldn't be suicidal in the first place.
This "they will find other ways" idea is silly, dangerous, and not supported by the facts.
edit: if anything, more people will probably jump, but not to kill themselves. thrillseekers might do it just for the hell of it (despite the fact there will likely be a big penalty)
http://www.cr.nps.gov/archeology/sites/antiquities/Monuments...
I'm assuming you made an error.
Look up the "hammer drop" episode of Mythbusters if you want to see the long explanation.
The second point still stands, though. I'd rather fall onto the concrete, where I could get help quickly and if I knocked myself out but survived I wouldn't drown.
Of course the force exerted on your feet would more than likely break your ankles and possibly your knees/legs, and severely impinge your hip joint. In addition, your head will likely receive an extreme "punch" as it comes into contact with the water. This alone might be enough to knock someone unconscious or kill them, but it depends on their neck, chest, head, body position, etc.
So if the mythbusters test were done again, it should definitely not be a really fat pig landing on its side; it should be a skinny dummy landing perfectly straight.
I am not a scientist, but I do have experience with cliff diving. (The real trick is when the water level is low, you have to expand your body as soon as you hit the water so you don't shoot down and hit the rocks at the bottom!)
You are confusing safety with coercion.