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“Reaching Out Can Make a Difference.”

Two years of data since the January 1, 2024, installation of the suicide deterrent nets on the Golden Gate Bridge—which constitutes a substantial post-installation evidence base—show that suicides from the site have nearly disappeared, with only four attempts made in 2025 and one death by suicide in early 2026. The $224 million project was initiated by the Marin County Coroner Ken Holmes in conjunction with the Bridge Rail Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending suicides and “undoing the magnetism of the bridge as a place to die.”

On-site installation of the stainless-steel netting began in August 2018 and ended in early 2024, spanning the full 1.7 miles on the east and west sides of the bridge.

The project followed more than a decade of advocacy led by the Bridge Rail Foundation, formed in 2006 by Dave Hull, Patrick Hines and Paul Muller; both Hull and Hines have been personally affected by suicide or a suicide attempt at the bridge. With active support from the Marin County Coroner and many other families impacted by suicide, the group advocated in district hearings and community forums, sharing tragic first-person stories, which Muller believes were “all preventable if the bridge had a barrier.”

Their continuous effort paid off. In 2008, the Bridge District Board approved the concept of a suicide deterrent net under the bridge. According to the Bridge Rail Foundation, “It was the first time in history that a majority of board members voted in favor of any physical structure to stop suicides in 70 years.” However, no money was allocated to fund its installation.

Over the next six years, Bridge Rail Foundation volunteers worked alongside Bridge District staff to secure funding for the net, from federal and state transportation sources. In 2014, most financing was approved by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

Installation of suicide barriers on the Golden Gate Bridge, February 2020.
*Photo courtesy of* Wikipedia Commons

The move to install suicide deterrent nets followed years of grim statistics: since its opening in 1937, the bridge has been a site for more than 2,000 deaths. In the past 20 years, the bridge averaged nearly 30 confirmed suicides annually.

The deterrents themselves are not loose nets, but systems of taut marine-grade stainless steel cables installed 20 feet below public walkways. The design is intended to prevent fatal falls by catching those who jump, leaving them injured and shaken—but alive and unable to continue to the unforgiving water below.

The implementation of the nets was influenced by evidence from Bern, Switzerland, where a safety net installed at Muenster Terrace successfully halted suicides at the site. Advocates hoped for a similar effect in San Francisco, long home to one of the world’s most notorious “suicide magnets,” as dubbed by the National Institute of Health.

Years after the barrier’s completion, numbers have shifted dramatically. In 2024, eight suicides were recorded at the bridge, a 73% reduction from the previous annual average. In 2025, that number has risen to nearly 87%.

Before the nets’ installation, trained bridge staff provided support to as many as 200 people in active crises each year. Following the barriers’ installation in 2024, staff members carried out 132 successful interventions, and in 2025, bridge patrol interventions were cut in half.

Crisis counseling hotline warning on the bridge.
*Photo courtesy of* Wikipedia Commons

“Access restriction—or removal of deadly means—is a critically important suicide prevention strategy” Muller said. “We remind all concerned how important it is to save lives—just as so many families who suffered a suicide loss did during our work at Golden Gate.”

“This isn’t the first net that the bridge has had on it, but it is the most permanent and the most effective one,” John Bateson, longtime director of one of the suicide prevention centers in the Bay Area and author of The Final Leap: Suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge, said. “What [the net’s] trying to do is break that siren’s call by no longer making [the Golden Gate Bridge] an attractive suicide site.”

In 1978, Richard Seiden, a research professor at the University of California, Berkeley, conducted a landmark follow-up study of 515 people who had been stopped by the California Highway Patrol from jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge between 1937 and 1971. Using official records, Seiden and a team of graduate students tracked what became of those individuals over 25 years.

Their findings challenged a common assumption about suicide: nearly 94% of those prevented from jumping were still alive at the end of the follow-up period or had died from other causes. Fewer than 6% died later by suicide. According to the Bridge Rail Foundation, this evidence played a major role in convincing the Golden Gate Bridge District that a suicide deterrent is effective and worth the cost.

“[Physical barriers like the nets] buy time for people to have second thoughts about jumping into the net if they happen to see it, and the result is that no one goes to the bridge with the same desire as they have in the past,” Bateson said.

“I really believe that having the net up and preventing other families from experiencing the tragedy that they’ve experienced is the one good outcome from their own loved one’s suicide,” he said.

While supporters argue that the nets can interrupt a moment of crisis, others emphasize that the deeper problem begins long before someone reaches the bridge. “It would be far more humane if our fragmented mental healthcare system caught people long before they considered ending their life,” Sherrie Page Guyer, a psychiatric nurse, said.

“The nets are important…they’re saving someone’s son or daughter…and for that person, that defining moment occurs at the very far end of their mental health journey,” Lynn Dolce, CEO of Edgewood, said. Edgewood is the oldest child-serving nonprofit west of the Mississippi. Today, they provide early intervention and prevention offerings to Bay Area youth in need of acute, intensive mental health services, as well as preventative outpatient services for predictable everyday stressors that young people face.

While the nets are an essential part of the mental health support system in the Bay, non-profit organizations like Edgewood are—and continue to be—just as important in providing earlier intervention and support for those experiencing suicidal ideation.

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, only 52.1% of adult Americans with mental illness receive needed treatment. “I hope the need to install this safety net raises awareness for the greater need for an improved mental healthcare system,” Guyer said.

“The net is a proven design that deters people from jumping, serves as a symbol of care and hope to despondent individuals,” reads a statement from the Golden Gate Bridge, “and, if necessary, offers people a second chance.”