The Golden Gate: A Bridge Too Deadly?

The notion at the heart of the training -- that even the most elaborately planned suicide is essentially impulsive -- was illustrated most persuasively by Seiden's 1973 survey, "Where Are They Now?," published in the journal Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior. The researcher set out to learn the fate of 515 people who came to the Golden Gate to die but were prevented, either by passersby or by the patrols that roam the bridge looking for likely jumpers.

Using public records spanning decades, Seiden determined that 94 percent were alive or had died of natural causes.

"That's the whole rationale for suicide prevention: that it is crisis-oriented, that there's an episode of vulnerability and you get them through it," Seiden said. "If you had to follow them around the rest of their lives with a butterfly net, it wouldn't work. But by and large, you don't."

Seiden's finding has been reinforced by reports from a variety of cities -- Toronto; Augusta, Maine -- where new barriers prevented jumps from the local "suicide bridge" without sending the fatal traffic to new sites. Researchers frequently point out that the barriers erected on the Ellington Bridge over Rock Creek in 1986 produced no rise in suicides from the Taft Bridge, just a block away.

"It's not that people chose an alternative method," said Andrew R. Pelletier, an epidemiologist for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "They just didn't commit suicide once the method wasn't available."

'I Want to Live'

His life flashed before his eyes, Baldwin said, but it was not his past:

"It was my daughter. It was my dog. It was my wife. It was my family, mom, dad, brothers. And I thought: This is horrendous. They're going to be devastated.

"And I was going down at the time. The one time I clearly understood the consequences of what I was doing, it was too late. I just went, 'Oh. I'm an idiot.'

"And from here on out, things get blurry.

"I looked down at the water, and it's rushing up at me, and I black out. I don't remember anything more about the fall itself. I don't remember hitting the water. The next thing I do remember is I'm swimming and I'm thinking, 'Someone, please, help me. I want to live.' "

The next thing Baldwin knew, he was on a Coast Guard cutter and people were cutting away his clothes. "They were saying, 'Do you know who you are?' 'Do you know what you did?' 'Do you know why you did it?' 'Do you have a phone number?'

"One of them said: 'Do you want to do that again?'

"And I remember chuckling. 'No. Not really.' "