Suicide Barrier Controversy
The Angus L. Macdonald Bridge has attracted media attention as a "hot-spot" for suicides. Among others, environmental activist Tooker Gomberg is believed to have committed suicide here.
In July 2007, suicide barriers were installed along 22% of the pedestrian lane at the bridge's western end (Halifax abutment) to prevent suicide attempts and protect navy personnel at HMC Dockyard which the bridge crosses over. On May 13, 2009 the general manager and CEO of the Halifax-Dartmouth Bridge Commission, Steve Snider, announced that a tender for the long-called for extension of the barriers along the full length of the bridge would be issued in June 2009. As of March 2010 the remaining sections of the suicide barrier have been installed, so that the bridge now has suicide barriers along 100% of its pedestrian walkways.
Recent computer modeling has eliminated previous concerns that the bridge was not capable of handling the weight of the additional steel.
Read more about this topic: Angus L. Macdonald Bridge
Famous quotes containing the words suicide, barrier and/or controversy:
“However great a man’s fear of life, suicide remains the courageous act, the clear-headed act of a mathematician. The suicide has judged by the laws of chance—so many odds against one that to live will be more miserable than to die. His sense of mathematics is greater than his sense of survival. But think how a sense of survival must clamour to be heard at the last moment, what excuses it must present of a totally unscientific nature.”
—Graham Greene (1904–1991)
“... social evils are dangerously contagious. The fixed policy of persecution and injustice against a class of women who are weak and defenseless will be necessarily hurtful to the cause of all women.”
—Fannie Barrier Williams (1855–1944)
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)