Installing safety nets on Golden Gate Bridge linked to 73% decline in suicides

(Press-News.org) 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.

The results, published online in the journal Injury Prevention, show a 73% decline in suicides in the 12 months since the nets were completed relative to the number before net installation began.

The researchers say their findings “highlight the value of installing nets on this bridge and the importance of barriers as a strategy to prevent suicides by jumping.”

The Golden Gate Bridge is a San Francisco landmark, but it is also well-known as a location for jumping suicide. The installation of safety nets to prevent suicide by jumping from the bridge was completed in January 2024, but was controversial, and no studies have yet examined their effectiveness. 

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 their installation (January 2024 to December 2024).

Because staff and volunteers at the bridge are trained to intervene when someone is displaying signs of a suicidal crisis, they 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 installation, suicides declined by 26% and after installation by 73%. 

There were 8.22 interventions by a third party per month before installation of the safety nets, 14.42 during installation and 11 after installation. During installation, the number of interventions by a third party increased by 75% and after installation by 34%.

It’s unclear why the number of third party interventions declined from the period of installation to the period once the nets were complete, but one possibility is that removing this suicide method resulted in fewer people visiting the site with the intention to jump, and therefore there were fewer opportunities for a third party to intervene, explain the authors.

They also acknowledge several study limitations including only having a year of post-installation data, the possibility that some suicides were misclassified as accidental drownings, and being unable to evaluate potential displacement effects (eg, suicide at a nearby jumping site) or substitution to other suicide methods.

However, they say to the best of their knowledge, this is the first study on the effectiveness of the newly installed safety nets at the Golden Gate Bridge and provides early but clear evidence that the safety nets are associated with an immediate and substantial reduction in suicides at the site. 

“There are many high-risk places around the world where people die by jumping from heights,” they add. “Our study provides further evidence to policymakers that barriers are highly effective means of reducing suicide at bridges.”

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