Of course this was a terrible thing to have done, and he needs to be charged with attempted murder, because that is the act he committed.
But having been stuck in traffic on the Woodrow Wilson bridge outside DC for three to four hours on more than one occasion (in midsummer, with two starving, squabbling kids in the backseat, without a functioning air conditioner, surrounded by diesel trucks belching out massive clouds of 99 degree exhaust directly into my car) in the last several years because somebody decides to make a dramatic plea for attention by staging a suicide jump (that I would like to point out, seldom is actually carried through)…
…I have the sneaking sensation that at the time, I’d have applauded and wolf-whistled and thrown money.
It’s always distressing to discover these pockets of misanthropy within oneself!
Huh, guess he wasn’t “harmonious” enough.
Oh gods, I have a friend who was the on scene cop with that jumper a couple of years back…the surrounding drivers who had been stuck there for 3 hours were begging him to shoot the dude.
DC traffic is bad enough without drama. I propose jumper go south and bridge dive into the Occoquan River instead.
That’s why the crowd chants, “Jump, jump, jump, jump, jump!” If you are going to kill yourself, go off in the woods and don’t bother any of us. I’m only sorry the guy he pushed survived. Wanting the weak and cowardly to die is not evil, it’s our inner nature simply wanting to cleanse the bloodline of the detritus.
Yep, I knew soon enough that the craven “social darwinists” would come out the second you posted this link.
It’s interesting reading stuff like this, you know, considering.
Yeesh. Daryn. A case in point on the empathy thing I’ve been going on about lately.
It seems to me that the attention payed to jumpers is exactly what they want, and the best way to prevent jumpers would be to ignore them entirely. A few people might still jump, a few more would get up to the top of a building or bridge and decide against it, but I’ll theorize that because people will realize they won’t get the attention they want (subconsciously or otherwise), they’ll just get a gun or a bottle of pills or something. Annoying, perhaps, that they’ll still off themselves, but it won’t be tying up traffic and resources. While sick, I think the pusher has a point when he says “selfish”.
TRH
I think the notion that suicidal people are just attention seeking paints a very simplistic picture of a complex situation. Most people who get to the point where they are standing on the bridge or holding the gun to their heads really are people who are at the end of their rope. If threatening suicide is their final cry for help, then ignoring that is much like ignoring someone broken and bleeding on the side of the road. Maybe neither person will die from what’s happening to them, but to ignore them (or worse, push them) is incredibly inhumane. Chances are, if you start ignoring people’s pleas for help, they’re going to actually follow through.
But then, I spend time on a crisis line where we deal with suicidality with some regularity. Once you talk a few times to people who are contemplating ending their lives, your perspective becomes a bit different, perhaps.
I am unfortunately inclined to ignore people who climb up on the Woodrow Wilson bridge during rush hour to off themselves, though I promise you it’s not because I have neither dealt with suicidal people directly nor have never felt the leanings myself. Actually, I’d say it’s more because I’ve done both that I feel rather coolly towards those folks.
Or, really, it may just be because I’m evil.
Sorry, Lisa, that wasn’t actually directed at your post directly. I was responding more to ferlessledr’s comment that “the best way to prevent jumpers would be to ignore them entirely”.
Must constrain rage at people claiming that anyone suicidal is weak and cowardly. Instead of trying to fin the words myself to refute this, I’ll just link to an eloquent post on a mirror of the archive site of a pro-choice suicide newsgroup. Pro-choice as in people who believe that you should have the right to die if you want to.
http://asharchive.mut80r.com/recourse.html