why is jumping off a bridge often fatal, but people are rarely injured in high diving?
In: Physics
I learned recently that high divers only do 3-5 jumps *per week* because it’s so hard on their bodies.
My neighbor’s teen son died (intentional suicide) by jumping off a bridge (over water). I actually thought the same thing.. like if you can swim wouldn’t that reflex kick in? I don’t know how to swim so you could kiss my ass goodbye.
I jumped off an 85 foot cliff in Arizona…main thing at those heights are to wear shoes to soften the blow and keep your body stiff and straight as an pencil
U.S. Navy abandon ship drills:
Wear your clothing including your shoes.
Go feet first.
Cross your legs at the ankles and clutch them together tightly. (You don’t want a high velocity sea water enema or have your legs dislocated when forced into a full extension split by the impact.)
Cross one arm across the chest and clutch your elbow tightly to the chest. With the other hand cover the mouth and nose tightly with the hand. The Sea will be COLD and it is reflex to suck in a breath when you get dunked in cold water. You DO NOT want to suck in a breath until you get back to the surface.
You will go deep. Stay tight until you quit falling down. Minimize your risk of hitting debris.
Follow bubbles to get back to the surface. If it is too dark to see bubbles’ drift up. You don’t want to be swimming for the bottom thinking you are headed for air.
If there is burning fuel on the surface; stir the surface to clear a space so you can surface to breath. Swim underwater until clear of burning before going into a survival float.
Unless it is an emergency in open sea; you really should be jumping into known conditions. Any dive from height is dangerous.
Two reasons.
1. Many bridges are [very high](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridges_in_the_United_States_by_height) above the water. The world record high-dive is 58.8 meters or ~193′. That’s on the low end of bridge heights – there are bridges in the US that are hundreds of feet above the water; the highest in the is 955 feet, but there are loads of bridges that are 3-400′ above the water all over the US. Because gravity accelerates you constantly doubling the height you fall means – not accounting for things like terminal velocity – you’re going much more than twice as fast when you hit bottom.
2. Most people who are high-diving are generally trained for it, specifically trained in how to land safely, and it’s generally only done in places where the water is deep enough to ensure a safe landing. Also, high-diving is generally attended by spectators, coaches, staff, etc, so any injuries that result can either be swiftly tended to or emergency services can be quickly called, whereas some rando jumping off a bridge probably isn’t doing it with a crowd watching them.
Bridges are high, the water underneath is deadly and pulls them away from shore where they then drown from a combination of hypothermia and exhaustion, and sharks for sure since the deadliest bridges are usually over salt water.
High dive pools have a lifeguard and the diver is usually either an expert or knows how to land in the water somewhat correctly. Ignore the sharks, they’re fictional because it’s a pool…
I used to go swimming at this big “Olympic sized” (probably not—probably about half the size of a football field—but big to a kid) pool that had a diving board, a high (10’?) diving board, and then 3 higher cement platforms.
One day I when I was there, a girl went off maybe the lowest or middle platform and landed bad—like ended up belly-flopping on her back.
Everyone in the whole huge pool area heard this huge ***SMACK!*** and looked over to where she hit. She was maybe 8 feet from the edge and she slowly, painfully made it to the edge and somehow pulled herself out of the water and up onto the poolside. There was a second or two for her to catch her breath, then the screaming started.
Everyone was evacuated and medics ran in and carefully strapped her—still screaming—to a back board, where her body and head were all secured against moving by straps.
Now imagine someone falling *many times that distance* into cold, choppy water, fully clothed, and probably 100-300 feet from the shore.
There was a video on Reddit this week of a high jump into water and he tossed something into the water to break the surface tension right before jumping. Sorry, don’t have the source but I’m sure someone could find it. There was a reason he did that. Without that, the water becomes deadly.
water tension is a huge factor, as well as technique
water is like concrete to jump into past a certain height
Some people don’t clear the bridge correctly and hit the concrete footers just a few feet under the water surface, or a sandbar, or a boat, or random drift wood, or other unknown danger.
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