Safety nets are located underneath the Golden Gate Bridge's roadway. (Barbara Munker/AP)
Newly installed safety nets along San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge reduced suicides there by 73 percent, a new analysis suggests.
The study looks at recent suicide deaths along the iconic bridge. Officials say there have been an average of 30 confirmed suicide deaths per year for the past 20 years. In 2024, officials finished erecting a continuous stainless-steel barrier on both sides of the bridge after years of pushback from those who opposed modifying the bridge’s art deco style.
To assess the new nets’ performance, researchers analyzed suicide data from monthly incident reports produced by the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District, which operates and maintains the bridge. Their results were published in the journal Injury Prevention.
The researchers divided the data into three periods: preinstallation, between January 2000 and July 2018; installation, between August 2018 and December 2023; and post-installation, between January 2024 and December 2024.
Six-hundred and eighty-one people were confirmed to have died by suicide at the bridge during the study period, and there were 2,901 third-party interventions.
Before the installation, there were 2.48 suicide deaths per month at the bridge. The number dropped to 1.83 suicides per month during the installation period and 0.67 suicides per month after installation, the researchers found — a 73 percent reduction from preinstallation.
Although the number of third-party interventions declined over time, the rate of interventions rose after the nets were installed, the researchers found, from 8.22 interventions per month before the nets were erected to 14.42 during installation and 11 afterward. The reasons for the increase in interventions by third parties were unclear, the researchers said.
The results provide “early but clear evidence that the safety nets are associated with an immediate and substantial reduction in suicides” at the Golden Gate Bridge, they conclude.
Ongoing monitoring and more research over a longer time frame is needed to further assess the success of the nets, the researchers say.
If you or someone you know needs help, visit988lifeline.org or call or text the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988.