Correction
In a prior piece, Jump, I had originally posited several assertions as to the statistics regarding the suicide rate on the Golden Gate Bridge; specifically why people lept from the 69th lightpost and also why they almost all jumped facing the east.
As all wonderful coincidences happen, this one presented itself quite nicely. An esteemed friend had posted a quote by an Edward Tufte, a name I had never heard and a quote that piqued my interest: "Don't get it original, get it right." That seemed perfect, in its compactness, so I began a little search on his name to see who he was. An image search provided many graphs, and sure enough I noticed the Suicide Graph that I had used in my Jump. A pleasant and all too rare occurence indeed. Clicking on the link for the Graph, I found some interesting information among the comments.
A complete stranger, Dan Swearingen, posted that: "Why east side? The east side is the pedestrian side. The west side is for bicycles."
Being a cyclist, and having ridden across that bridge innumerable times in the past, this stupid fact slapped my cheek with a nice, pliable smack. A double smack, actually, when I re-read my own reason as to why the east side garnered more leaps: it was romantic, trite, and illogical.
Another complete stranger, Matt Hempey, provides the proof for why lightpost number 69, on the eastern side of the bridge, is the most popular: "69 is exactly halfway between the towers, at the point the cable reaches its lowest point. Not only is it midway, the bridge engineers even provided a little platform for you to jump off."
That one I was a bit closer to, thankfully. I had only loosely guessed the midpoint part but could not remember exactly if it was dead center between the two shorts or dead center between the two towers. Mathematically, counting the lightposts, points to number 70-something being exactly midway, yet it makes far more sense to find the post exactly between the two towers since that would be the place where the main cables dip down the lowest. My keen observation also forgot to remember the little platform. Oh well.
