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In seven years, five people have died by leaping from the spans that carry Interstate 95 over the Rappahannock.
Fredericksburg's Cowan Boulevard bridge over I-95 includes fences of varying heights. |
BY JIM HALL
It was 8:30 that Monday night in 2007, warm and clear, when the young woman stopped her car in the northbound lanes of the Interstate 95 bridge and leaped into the Rappahannock River.
It happened again last year, this time from the southbound lanes. A woman abandoned her car, climbed the bridge railing and jumped to her death.
And again two weeks ago, a man this time. He crashed his truck into the northbound guardrail, got out and jumped.
Since 2000, at least 10 people have jumped from Fredericksburg-area bridges and overpasses. Some died.
The toll doesn't include two people who were talked out of jumping by police, one on the Falmouth Bridge and the other on the Blue-Gray Parkway bridge. Also excluded is the man who fell from the Falmouth Bridge in 2002. No one is sure if his death was an accident or suicide.
But no structure attracts the distraught the way the twin bridges for Interstate 95 do. At about 90 feet above the Rappahannock, the spans are among the tallest structures in the area.
A person who leaps from one of them experiences a three-second drop into the shallow water below. The impact is like being hit by a car: broken bones, lacerated organs and internal bleeding.
"Death is instantaneous," said Dr. Frederic Phillips, the region's medical examiner.
Three times in the last three years, and five times since 2002, people have died leaping into the river from the interstate bridges.
The toll is compounded by the public services that must be brought to bear and the heavy traffic that results.
Can anything be done to stop bridge-jumping? Should anything be done? Would barriers help, or would they simply move the jumpers somewhere else?
A DIFFERENT DEATH
In Virginia, suicides occur more than twice as often as homicides, according to Virginia Department of Health statistics.
The Fredericksburg area had 43 suicides in 2007, the latest year for which statistics are available.
More than half of the suicides were shootings. The deaths are usually private, done in basements or backyards.
Bridge-jumping is different.
Bridges are convenient, perhaps the only lethal method available for some people.
And jumping is usually a public event, even hostile, as if the person is saying, "This is what you've made me do and the world is going to know," Phillips said.
Added Dr. Lanny Berman, executive director of the American Association of Suicidology in Washington, "They want to leave their body in the newspaper, if you will, as a way of having impact on others."
BARRIERS AN OPTION?
In recent months, several U.S. cities have decided to invest in barriers or other devices to prevent people from jumping off their bridges.
Seattle, for example, will place a fence on the Aurora Bridge over Lake Union.
Santa Barbara, Calif., has voted for a barrier for the Cold Spring Canyon Bridge.
And in San Francisco, the bridge and highway district voted in October to place a net beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, the nation's deadliest suicide bridge.
Proponents point to Toronto as an example of what a barrier can do. In 2003, Toronto built the Luminous Veil, a 14-foot steel screen, at the Bloor Street Viaduct to deter jumpers.
The viaduct crosses a busy highway and had become a favorite place for suicides. On average, there was a suicide there every 72 days before construction of the barrier. Since the screen was placed, there have been none, an official there says.
"Barriers are effective," Berman said.
Dr. Frank DeForest, clinical services director for the Rappahannock Area Community Services Board, compares barriers to a requirement that local judges impose on persons who have been involuntarily committed to Snowden of Fredericksburg, the psychiatric hospital.
Prior to their release from Snowden, patients must get rid of any weapons in their homes, DeForest said.
"It's a no-brainer," he added. "You've got to get rid of the thing that is most immediately available, the thing that makes it so easy and so lethal."
DISPLACEMENT POSSIBLE
Bridge barriers can reduce suicides at that location, but they may not prevent suicides overall.
"Not one [study] finds a statistically significant change in the suicide rate in the surrounding community after the barrier is installed," wrote Garrett Glasgow, associate professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
In other words, it's possible that a person who's determined will simply move to another location or choose another way of ending his life.
Berman, director of the suicide association, concedes that the data are inconsistent.
But he adds, "There is a very small substitution effect. If you prevent five suicides at a site, you might have one go somewhere else, but all five don't."
The reason, experts say, is that suicide is often an impulsive act.
"If you can delay it even for a few minutes, you may get the person past the point where the impulse subsides, and they may never do it again," DeForest said.
Locally, the Virginia Department of Transportation has installed barriers on several of the area's newest bridges, where pedestrians are permitted.
A black wire fence, angled at the top toward the road, extends about 6 feet above the guardrail on one side of the Cowan Boulevard Bridge over I-95 in Fredericksburg. On the other side, an 8-foot fence has been erected.
Similar barriers are in place at the White Oak Road and Cool Spring Road bridges over the CSX railroad tracks in southern Stafford County.
The cost of fencing for each of these bridges is about $70,000, said Tina Bundy, spokeswoman for the transportation department.
Bundy said there are no plans to retrofit the I-95 bridges with barriers, since pedestrians are not allowed there.
"I'm sure we will continue to review it, as we do all bridges, but it's not something that's on the table," she said.
Jim Hall: 540/374-5433
Email: jhall@freelancestar.com
