Word: gate
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Kevin Hines, now 24, who survived a plunge off the Golden Gate Bridge and is now part of a campaign to add a barrier to the bridge, talked with TIME's Amanda Bower about his September 2000 jump. Here's his dramatic account, in his own words...
...debate over whether to install a barrier on San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, the world's most popular place for suicides, is an abstraction for most people. But it is all too real for Kevin Hines. Of the more than 1,200 people who have jumped off the bridge, Hines is one of only 26 to have plummeted the 220 ft. into San Francisco Bay, hit the water at 75 mph and somehow survived. As soon as his hands left the bridge's railing, he says he thought, "I don't want...
...Debate has raged for more than 30 years over the cost, esthetics and effectiveness of installing a barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge, with various proposals made and rejected going as far back as 1970. But momentum has built in the last year, fueled in part by a documentary by filmmaker Eric Steel, who trained his cameras on the bridge for most of the daylight hours in 2004 - not to chronicle a day in the life of the bridge, as he had originally told officials, but to make a film about suicide...
...would be too expensive. Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District spokeswoman Mary Currie says ballpark estimates put the cost of a barrier between $15 million and $25 million. "We don't know where those funds would come from," she says. It took over a year just to get the $2 million for the study. Then there is the cost of security cameras, telephones and regular police patrols aimed at stopping jumpers. (About 50 people a year are talked or pulled down before they jump...
...think about while you're waiting at the boarding gate. But there are ways to lower your risk: stay hydrated (by drinking plenty of water and laying off alcohol and caffeine), move around as much as possible, avoid sleeping pills that knock you out, consider wearing support hose to improve circulation, and ask your doctor about taking aspirin to thin your blood...