The 4 Most Popular Suicide Bridge Destinations

Have you ever wanted to know about the most popular bridges from which to commit suicide? Watch this video.

Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge which crosses the Yangtze River in China holds the honor of being the most popular suicide site in the world. Estimates put the suicide rate at at least one per week. Exact figures are impossible in part because the Chinese authorities refuse to count those who miss the river, landing on the riverbank or in trees, because when one’s aim is bad enough to miss a river, even statistics don’t want to claim them.

But the story isn’t all sad. Local resident, Chen Si, has dedicated his life to talking people down from the bridge. His cell phone number is plastered all over. He’s hung tons of pro-living messages on the bridge. It’s incredibly noble.

But don’t let Mr. Chen steal the spotlight. His life-saving negotiation skills are not the only suicide prevention method ever used in China. In the southern city of Guangzhou, workers were once ordered to smear butter over a different bridge jumper hotspot in order to make it too slippery to climb. The method is not only delicious but reportedly worked very well.

What hotspot did the non-buttered of the China bridges beat out? The Golden Gate Bridge? in beautiful San Francisco, California. Yes, the Golden Gate bridge is incredibly popular with short-term flight enthusiasts, welcoming an estimated 1,500 temporary pilots. The city stopped keeping official count at 997, I assume because they feared a rush of hopefuls wanting to be number 1,000. Because the one thing suicidal people–and all mental chaos and suffering implied–care about is arbitrary legacy.

Like most people of my generation, The Golden Gate bridge will forever be inextricably linked to the open credits of the TV show Full House, a show which I feel asks the necessary question when trying to understand the mental unpredictability associated with so much suicide…”what ever happened to predictability?”…that was how the song went at the beginning.

Jonathan Brandis hung himself. He has a guest appearance on Full House. I guess the house isn’t quite as full anymore…

The Prince Edward Viaduct in Toronto Canada is ranked as the 2nd most fatal standing structure in North America, just behind the Golden Gate Bridge, which is why I’ve given it the nickname The Silver Gate Bridge. But Toronto refuses to answer my letters suggesting the nickname. And the one time they did respond, when I threatened suicide if they did not, it was just to suggest their own Prince Edward Viaduct as a location for said suicide.

To prevent suicide attempts the city of Toronto installed prison bar like barrier on the bridge, designed by architect Derek Revington, which he calls The Luminous Veil, which of course means a thing of light that prevents one from seeing light. I’m not an art critic, but that name seems to suggest that suicide is a positive thing. I mean, this thing prevents a person from seeing the light.

Number four, and the second most suicidey bridge in the United States, the George Washington Memorial Bridge, so named because George Washington lept from the bridge after chopping down a cherry tree. That can’t be right. Why would you chop down a cherry tree. You’d have no cherries. That’d be enough to drive me to suicide….oh, it makes sense now.

In 2006 a group called FRIENDS, that’s Fremont Individuals and Employees Nonprofit to Decrease Suicides, came together with the primary focus to install a suicide barrier on the bridge. Their secondary purpose: to remind mentally fragile individuals on the verge of suicide that they do have friends…in the form of a group with an awkwardly forced acronym indicating as such.