Suicide Nets Set for Golden Gate

A panel has approved a plan to hang nets along the Golden Gate bridge to catch would-be suicides, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The bridge's board voted 14 to 1 in favor of installing the barrier after hearing testimony from psychiatrists, suicide prevention experts, and family members of  people who have leaped from the bridge, believed to be the world's top suicide magnet.

The netting—expected to cost up to $50 million—was a controversial proposal but its supporters pointed to the success of a similar effort at the Empire State Building, and to a study that found 94% of people stopped from jumping off the bridge did not go on to kill themselves elsewhere. Some 2,000 people have jumped from the bridge since it opened in 1937, 19 of them this year.
(More suicide stories.)