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The Golden Gate Bridge first opened to vehicular traffic at high noon on May 28, 1937. It is approximately 1.7 miles long, and its two towers are 746 feet tall. Channel clearance is approximately 220 feet, and the cables that support the suspended roadway are 36.5 inches in diameter. More people have jumped off of the Golden Gate Bridge to their deaths than any other bridge in the world. It is a magnet for the desperate, arguably the number-one suicide destination on the planet. Depressed people with dramatic flair like to go there on their last legs, ready to cross over into the next dimension.

In 1975, at the Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute in San Francisco, a psychiatrist named David Rosen conducted a study of people who jumped off of the Golden Gate Bridge and accidentally survived. Here is what he discovered:

All these survivors, during and after their jumps, experienced mystical states of consciousness characterized by losing the sense of time and space and by feelings of spiritual rebirth and unity with other human beings, the entire universe, and God. As a result of their intimate encounter with death, some of them had a profound religious conversion; others described a reconfirmation of their previous religious beliefs. One of the survivors denied any suicide intent altogether. He saw the Golden Gate Bridge as “golden doors” through which he will pass from the material world into a new spiritual realm.

In olden times, suicides were viewed as contagious. People who killed themselves were often buried at crossroads in the dark of night under large piles of stones. In addition, stakes were sometimes driven through their dead hearts in an effort to prevent the sickness of their spirits from infecting the living.

Once every twenty minutes or so, somebody commits suicide in the United States of America.

Approximately once every two weeks, somebody jumps off of the Golden Gate Bridge.

The free fall takes about four seconds.

Those who jump off of the Golden Gate Bridge hit the water below at a speed of roughly seventy-five miles per hour, with a force of fifteen thousand pounds per square inch.

In 1993, a guy named Steve Page threw his three-year-old daughter, Kellie, over the railing of the Golden Gate Bridge. A few seconds later, he followed her.

In a 1993 poll conducted by the San Francisco Examiner, 54 percent of respondents said that they did not want a suicide barrier constructed on the bridge to prevent people from doing things like that. They felt it would mar the bridge. They felt it would obstruct their view. They felt it would impinge upon people’s freedoms.

gephyrophobia n.

Fear of bridges or of crossing them.