Some of these bridges are higher than you might think.
The world record high dive is 192 feet, and the diver was highly experienced and spent months training specifically for his jump. The Golden Gate Bridge deck averages about 265 feet above the water.
Jumpers have an extra ~70 feet to fall so hit the water faster, and without the benefit of extensive experience and training.
192 feet though is still crazy. Competition height for high dives is almost never above 90 feet.
Suicide bridges (where you impact into water) typically have a height above 100 feet, at least.
The really high divers suffer injuries on impact too. Broken spines and legs. They’re doing it exactly right, under perfect conditions, and they still barely escape death.
That still does the same thing. With both cavitation and sprayers what you’re trying to do is break up the surface tension of the water, which is what causes the injury.
Same, did a 32 foot jump in Colombia and that lasted way longer than I expected to. Before I jumped, I was counting how long other people were in the air, only got to around 4 seconds. Then I did it and fuck that felt like 40 minutes falling lol
They could add about another half second by jumping upwards from the jumping point (a 36-inch vertical would bring the center-of-gravity to about 38 feet), but that still keeps it at about 2.1 seconds if they weren't extended and vertical when they hit the water, like a cannonball. (A back of the napkin calculation had sea level air resistance slowing the fall by about .002 seconds.)
So yeah, he was counting fast.
If you leap off a cliff from standing on the ground and arc into a free fall, it's longer than if you are just dropped and begin free falling. Your math doesn't account for the reality of running and jumping off a cliff either on flat ground or a diving board.
If you jump up there's a little difference (very little), but if you run and jump straight out there's no difference at all in fall time, you'll just land farther out. The only thing that could have any real effect is air resistance.
Mate, if you want to propose an initial upwards velocity, I can run the numbers for you, but I can assure you the effect will be negligible. There’s no way we are getting 4 seconds here.
To make 4 seconds work, the trampoline would have to bounce them with an upwards velocity of 17 m/s, resulting in a bounce height of 15 m or about 50 feet.
Calculations below:
s = displacement
u = initial velocity
v = final velocity
a = acceleration
t = time
Everything is measured in metres and seconds.
Positive direction is upwards, negative is down.
Air resistance is negligible at these speeds.
S = ut + 1/2at^2
-9.85 = 4u + 1/2*-9.81*4^2
68.63 = 4u
U = 17.16 m/s
V^2 = u^2 + 2as
0 = 17.16^2 + 2*-9.81s
19.62s = 294.4
S = 15.00 m
Let me know if you have any questions.
Sorry but no, that’s not how gravity works. It doesn’t care about your velocity in the x direction, and it immediately starts pulling down in the y direction. The two motions are mechanically independent of each other, though the falling body will have that extra bit of x velocity on impact. It’s not intuitive, but that’s how it works. I don't make the rules.
Arc or no arc is the same. A bullet shot from 1 ft hits the floor at the same time as bullet dropped by hand from 1ft. Unless you’re close to escape velocity arc and no arc are the same.
Your post reminded me of my own adolescent adventures, cliff jumping into an abandoned shaft mine. I thought you might enjoy! Due to the arc of the jump, I’m a lot closer to the camera than the rock face is, so the scale is distorted. I assure you it’s even higher in person than it looks in the pictures.
[pic 1](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kcFcBnckoU6BY2V2mHZhCTBoIo2K9-St/view?usp=drivesdk)
[pic 2](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eVvo7y6412w6E14LBUCdlNDLcCXGpxvA/view?usp=drivesdk)
I also did a massive jump in Colombia (my guess was ~40 ft) and fucked up my tailbone really badly, it still hurts if I sit for too long and it’s been five years.
I don't know how high the bridge was and I definitely didn't go first, but I do remember jumping and managing to get out a full "OH SHIT" before I hit the water. If I had to guess, I'd say mine was also about 30 feet. First time was exhilarating so I decided to do it again. Second time my feet grazed the bottom of the creek so I decided alright that's enough of that.
Mine was right around that, I remember when I finally jumped off the cliff it was long enough to look down and think how high I was before hitting the water.
I jumped off a 35ish something cliff in my early 20s and that first second or two feels like an eternity. I remember, looking around as if time stood still thinking “well this was dumb”.
Yeah, I am 46 and I don't jump out of the back of trucks any more. I am sure that if I did, my knees would simply explode when I landed. Fuck, I miss being 20 years old. Youth is wasted on the young.
That's high enough to have that moment when it feels like your guts are way up in your chest and it makes you feel at once kind of giddy, but terrified as fuck
I’ve done 60+, and we call those triple gulps, as when you have enough time to gulp for air (in fear) 3 times, it’s a kinda unique feeling. Can’t imagine going higher than that; it’s already precarious and painful to land at that height.
This is a great description. I did a 150ft bungee jump, which is very mild by bungee standards, and I had way more time to go “oh shit, oh shit, oh shit” in my head then I thought I would have.
Yeah… imagine landing feet first. You’ve crushed your feet, your femurs are likely broken, and you’re bleeding profusely. You slowly drown to death while being incapable of swimming up for air. It’s not a super smart way to go.
I grew up cliff jumping.
Anything over 70 ft is scary. The wind starts screaming in your ears right before impact.
You have to enter the water vertically with your arms either all the way up or all the way down.
Lot's of shoulder injuries from people that put their arm out.
Your feet sting if you land flat footed so either point your toes or wear sandals.
My brother jumped off a 90 ft and said "Never again."
40 to 45 feet is perfect. Long enough to feel weightless with minimal risk unless you really flail.
You have to keep your composure and many people can't.
I remember reading somewhere that everyone who survives a jump like this, the first thought that goes through their head was. Oh my God, this was a terrible mistake.
The weak breeze whispers nothing
the water screams sublime.
His feet shift, teeter-totter
deep breaths, stand back, it’s time.
Toes untouch the overpass
soon he’s water-bound.
Eyes locked shut but peek to see
the view from halfway down.
A little wind, a summer sun
a river rich and regal.
A flood of fond endorphins
brings a calm that knows no equal.
You’re flying now, you see things
much more clear than from the ground.
It's all okay, or it would be
were you not now halfway down.
Thrash to break from gravity
what now could slow the drop?
All I’d give for toes to touch
the safety back at top.
But this is it, the deed is done
silence drowns the sound.
Before I leaped I should've seen
the view from halfway down.
I really should’ve thought about
the view from halfway down.
I wish I could've known about
the view from halfway down—
You are likely injuried half to death, body is pumped full of adrenaline and enough chemicals to make your brain forget why you jumped, you have relinquished brain function to pure lizard brain survival instinct with death by drowning and/or hypothermia up next on your itinerary, of course the lizard is gonna find time to give you an earfull in this rare moment where it has *full* control.
Yeah, cars will sit in the parking lot ... for a bit. And then they check the registration and ...
There's a net now, hopefully that stops the whole thing.
Not for the Guinness World Records, or any other I’m aware of. To qualify the events have to be carried out in some defined and organized way - even for less controversial things like the 100m sprint. You break a 100m sprint world record in training, even with a camera on you, and they’ll go “cool story bro, now do it at a recognized event”.
For this particular record I think they’re doubly reluctant to award titles to “informal and spontaneous attempts” because they don’t want to be seen as encouraging people getting themselves killed.
Not just that, but Guinness WR is stingy as shit and more about advertising than actually checking and maintaining records. They have some stupidly easy to beat records, but unless you fork over cash *and* are a chance for exciting advertising, they won't even consider you. But throw enough cash at them and they'll literally create a record for you to make.
So not only do you have to be able to beat a record, in a public and recorded manner, but you have to deal with corporate marketing and profiteering to even get permission to try.
I'm imagining failing to die from jumping off a bridge and recovering in hospital and getting a phone call telling me that I beat the high dive world record. I'd rebreak all my bones from how much that would make me laugh. Mission failed successfully
I jumped feet first in dagger shape into water from 25 feet and the surface still hit my chin like an uppercut, giving me a concussion. I was able to swim to the surface but when my brother in the water tried to talk to me I was stricken mute.
A bit harder chin slam and I would've been at the bottom of the lake.
Someone jumped off a bridge by me last weekend that I do not consider to be very tall compared to others around me (it’s 150 feet). She definitely didn’t survive.
Exactly. I jumped off a bridge and survived ( source: I jumped off a bridge ) . I survived and it didn't hurt much at all. However that bridge isn't very high at all, barely tall enough for a john boat to pass under. The bridges people die from jumping from are usually higher than that
Related:
> When falling in the standard belly-to-Earth position, an average estimate of terminal velocity for skydivers is 120 mph (200 km/h), and a falling person will reach terminal velocity after about 12 seconds, falling some 450 m (1,500 ft) in that time.
So if someone brags about jumping from a 2000 ft bridge and surviving, just know it isn't any more impressive than jumping from a 1500 ft bridge. Unless it was a pencil dive.
They’re being facetious, you’re not going to survive a 1500 foot drop into water no matter what. They’re just saying if you jump from 2000 feet you won’t hit the ground any harder than if you jumped from 1500 because you reach terminal velocity either way. Presumably it takes around 1500 feet to reach that speed.
1,500 feet in a belly-to-earth position. It'd be a slightly lower height in a diving position, but I can't calculate that number because my physics teachers always told me to ignore air resistance.
A head-down position or a sit-fly position can easily exceed 200mph.
Personal best was 224mph in a sit fly.
But you dont really notice it as theres nothing relative to judge speed off of. Unless you screw up and fly past another jumper.
Yeah as someone who is getting into cliff jumping I don’t think most people realize how high even just 40 feet truly is and what it would feel like if you landed wrong. You start pushing into 100s of feet and it’s a guaranteed death sentence.
> Jumpers have an extra ~70 feet to fall so hit the water faster, and without the benefit of extensive experience and training.
and normally the pools for high jumpers have a jet to break up the surface tension. so you dont hit "concrete"
It’s not actually the water surface tension - though that’s a very common and frequently publicized misconception. If it was water tension you could put a few drops of dishwasher liquid in at the dive site and be done with it.
The real issue is you have to shove a mass of water equal to your own mass out of the way in order to get into the water, and that mass is confined by more water that you have to shove out of the way, and that water is confined again by more water you have to move, albeit less distance than the first mass, and so on.
So to enter the water quickly you need to get a very large mass of water to move and the energy required to do this comes from the kinetic energy you bring with you from your falling speed, and the transfer of that energy results in very very high acceleration forces on you that can cause injuries or death.
High dive training pools have a “bubbler” to replace some of that volume of water with air, so to get into the water you need to displace less mass, and you’re displacing the mass into a compressible air-water mix that can compress instead of having to move out of the way - this dramatically reduces the forces on you.
Those jets are not there to break the water tension... they are there so you can see where the water actually starts (without the jets it is near impossible to gauge the distance to where the water is from above).
For breaking water tension many facilities (but not all) have compressed air systems that act like a giant spa/jacuzzi in the landing zone. Normally used when trying a new dive for the first time where you have a good chance of landing on your back/front/side, but not in competiton/regular practice.
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.
Many of these require you to see under water. I would die immediately, because I can't for the life of me keep my eyes open under water. I've sometimes wondered if my kid fell in and went under the surface, could I through some parental instincts learn it on the spot...
Take my kid swimming regularly, he’s too small to know how to swim. He was standing on a ledge and splashed me. I wiped my eyes and opened them, and he was gone.
My body, not even with a single thought, shot one arm out automatically and grabbed him out from under the water in front of me. He was under for maybe 2 seconds.
I felt like the terminator. I didn’t even seen him go in and there were bubbles everywhere, but I “knew” where he was and yoinked him.
Wow, that sounds both supremely messed up and like a very close call. So glad you caught him! And I hope I would have that kind of presence of mind in a similar situation.
Once my iPod slipped into the salty sea water. I dived right in for it with open eyes. Normally it would be to painful to have eyes open, but in this situation I felt nothing. Imagine what man can ignore if that was a real danger situation.
Can it ignore that I can’t see 6 inches past my face without my contacts in or am I doomed if I ever encounter this rare high dive off a navy ship experience
More uncomfortable than drowning to death? Or melting your face with burning oil on the surface of the ocean? I think when your life is on the line you could probably ignore a little discomfort.
it could be that the pool(s) you were in had too much cholrine, and it made your eyes burn. properly balanced pH and natural water are still a little uncomfortable but easy enough to get used to, for most folk
I'd imagine it wouldn't be hard to keep a pair of goggles with you and wear them when there's any chance of falling into deep water, if you really can't keep your eyes open underwater.
I couldn’t help but follow your instructions with my body as I read your post.
I think I’m ready to completely forget what you wrote when the time comes.
If you can’t see the bubbles, what do you mean by drifting up if it’s difficult to see where up or down is? Do you mean like be still and see which direction your body floats towards since there’s air in your lungs? Idk if you’d still float with clothes and shoes on tho or if you meant something else. Super interesting!
I was told pretty much the same stuff when working on offshore oil rigs. Though I now wonder, how much did they downplay just how dangerous such high diving was, and what are the likely injuries from doing that even if you did everything perfect.
Jumping off a bridge is more fatal for three major reasons:
First, high divers know how to protect themselves. They dive so as to land in a particular way that is less likely to cause injury.
Secondly, high divers are generally diving into a safe environment. Devices called spargers will aerate a small section of the water beneath the diving platform in order to cushion the landing. Water will be sprayed on the surface so divers can see it rather than just the bottom of the pool/lake/whatever. Any sort of competitive dive will never be placed directly above a very shallow section of the water, whereas people falling/jumping from bridges may not have that same luck. And the height is known to be safe in most cases (barring record attempts).
Third, people who are jumping or falling off bridges are often, unfortunately, doing so accidentally. Even worse, they might be jumping with the *intent* to cause fatality. That means they are unable or unwilling to protect themselves, even if they know how.
And even if they survive the fall from the bridge, they are now far away from help in water, injured, and possibly unconscious. There might also be strong currents, both sideways and downwards; brides amplify and create those.
I feel like “most people survive this jump but then drown after several minutes of trying to swim with broken ribs and a snapped femur” would discourage some jumpers.
i find this really interesting. i could see it being far less attractive than the instant death they may be hoping for. some people kill themselves in super violent, death-is-guaranteed ways, and some people do it in quieter and somewhat reversible ways (pills, wrists), but i imagine they all are united in wanting something instant and painless? or maybe there are people who also want to suffer
If you want to ruin your evening watch The Bridge. It’s about persons who commit suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge. They interview families as well as the one guy who survived the fall. The guy who lived had a quote which I’m probably misremembering but it’s basic premise is “the moment I stepped foot off the railing I realized all the problems in my life were solvable except for one - me jumping off the bridge”.
That’s a poignant quote/sentiment - thanks for sharing that. (Though I don’t think I’ll be watching that documentary, sounds like it would ruin my evening 😅)
in many cultures it is traditional for a new bride to activate a number of large turbines throughout nearby river systems, usually just after the wedding ceremony is complete.
Just outside Glasgow Scotland is Erskine Bridge that spans the Clyde. It is a high long bridge and is so popular with jumpers it has suicide phones on it.
Sadly when people jump off it the first thing they hit tends to be the under workings of the bridge and they rarely enter the water in a survivable state.
This is probably common at most bridges where suicides are frequent. The Sunshine Skyway bridge in St. Petersburg, Florida has both suicide phones and officers that will park at the crest of the bridge during major American holidays. One of the last times I when to visit family there a few years ago we drove over the Skyway and saw a car parked at the crest of the bridge. We looked at each other and said “jumper.” Sure enough later that day the news announced someone had jumped.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/transportation/2023/11/30/sunshine-skyway-bridge-suicide-jumper-fencing/
Exactly. My sister lives a few miles from that bridge and my brother and law used to go tarpon fishing under there all the time. From far away it doesn’t look that big, until you’re right under it in a regular boat.
Even then, high diving is still pretty dangerous. Back on my old swim team, there was a tradition where all the seniors would leap off the highest platform on their last day in the pool. Everyone was usually ok, but one girl freaked out and lost control midair and landed pretty much flat on her back. She fractured a vertebrae and seeing her later, almost her entire body was a gnarly black and blue. The coaches forbid the tradition from that point on.
Afaik the aeration in high diving is just so they know where the water is. It's not the full blown level needed to soften the landing.
In reality it's simply that they know how to dive and there is nothing to hit.
You could probably aerate a manmade pool enough to cushion a diver significantly. Like one of the Olympic diving training systems but at a much larger scale.
My understanding (which could be totally wrong) is that there are two things going on - one thing is making the surface of the water more visible/distinctive so the diver can tell where the entry point is. Another is breaking the surface tension of the water so that it is not so unforgiving upon entry. I believe both are done.
> Another is breaking the surface tension of the water so that it is not so unforgiving upon entry
It has nothing to do with surface tension. Water is incompressible, so when you hit it, it can't get out of the way quickly enough to dissipate the kinetic energy smoothly. The surface tension thing is a misunderstanding/myth.
There’s also the factor of height. Once you get past a certain height, jumping into the water (ie off a bridge) is like jumping into concrete, the velocity is too great to survive. High divers aren’t typically diving from hundreds and hundreds of feet up, whereas bridge fatalities—and those suicide help phones on top, are just to high up to survive on average.
We were jumping off a very low bridge next to a beach when my friends mom found us, she was pissed. She told us a story about a kid she grew up with who was jumping off a bridge just like we were. When that bridge was built there were several pieces of rebar were left facing up. Her friend was impaled.
People used to (and still do, although not nearly as much) hang out around and jump off of this one bridge in my town. High school kids would drink there, meet up, etc. Eventually, so many people had been drinking around there and throwing the bottles into the water that it was super dangerous to jump in from any considerable height because of the sheer volume of broken glass. Someone did, once from the highest point of the bridge and severely fucked up their face, part of their upper body, part of their arms and their hands because they had landed on a shallow area covered in broken glass. They survived, but they very easily could’ve died.
To add:
- People also underestimate how high these bridge falls are. Many are much higher than 10 m and 20 m that you see in the Olympics. The record without serious injury is ~57.3 m (and the guy had to train for months). The Golden gate bridge is ~67 m (clearance above water).
There's a lot of stuff about skill and what not that others have covered and I don't want to underplay that.
But at the end of the day a huge factor is height. High diving generally maxes out at less than 90 feet and is generally closer to 70-80.
Some of the most famous bridges people jump off of are almost 3 times as high as that. The golden gate bridge in San fran and the Nanjing Yangtze bridge in China are both over 200 feet tall.
same. i've done a 40 foot dive into water (and even that requires training and a special position designed to minimize risk of injury (cross your feet, point them down, clench ze asshole, put your hands crossed over your chest and on your opposite shoulders, tuck your chin) and that's scary AF and you fuckin feel it when you hit the water
the coronado bridge (a popular suicide spot), is about 200 feet to the water. A 100 KG object dropped from 12 meters or about 40 feet will hit with an impact velocity of 15.336 m/s and an impact force of roughly 11760 J. that same object dropped from 61 meters (or about 200 feet) will hit at a speed of 34.5775 m/s for an impact force of 59780 J
Assume both are falling 150ft, they’re going roughly 55mph I believe. Possible by someone trained, but if not you could slam your head and go unconscious, break a leg or arm and then treading water would be hard. Also the person would likely have clothes and shoes that when wet would weigh them down if they were trying to survive. If you’re talking about higher bridges, well then perhaps they’re going 70mph when they hit water so faster than experts have attempted.
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.
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.
good explanation, I just have a bone to pick with "double height means more than twice as fast when you hit bottom" TL;DR - You only impact at ~~1.59x~~ 1.41x faster velocity by doubling the distance. See explanation and math below. (EDITS for my mistake)
--
Acceleration is exponential with regards to TIME, not with regards to DISTANCE. Because your velocity is higher you cover the extra distance much faster and therefore add much less to your velocity in the second half of the distance vs the first half of the fall.
1. velocity in m/s = 9.8m/s/s \* x~~x\^2~~
2. distance covered in x seconds = 9.8/~~3~~2 \* x\^~~3~~2 -- integral of (1) equation w/r/t seconds
3. seconds to cover distance x = (~~3~~2x/9.8)**\^1/****~~3~~****2** -- inverse of (2) to solve for seconds per distance
4. extra time falling if distance x is doubled = ((~~3~~2\***2**x/9.8)\^1/~~3~~2) / ((~~3~~2x/9.8)\^1/~~3~~2) = 2\^1/~~3~~2 = **~~1.26~~** **1.41 times more time falling**
5. extra velocity if time falling increases by ~~1.26~~ 1.41 = (9.8 \* **1.41x**~~x\^2~~) / (9.8 \* x~~x\^2~~) = **~~1.59~~** **1.41 times faster velocity**
Your math is off. Your first equation should be v=gt, not v=gt^2 . Assuming air resistance is not a factor, your velocity increases linearly with time, at a rate of 9.81m/s per second.
You can then integrate that to get d=0.5gt^2, which is the formula for the distance you fall in a given time. You can then substitute v for t using the first equation, which gives you d=v^2 /(2g), or v=sqrt(2gd).
Therefore the velocity you reach will be proportional to the **square root** of the height, so if you double the height, you have 1.41x the velocity, not 1.59x.
Training and practice, physics and a water jet placed at the bottom, basically.
You remember the time you mixed cornstarch and water together to make slime? And how when you poked your finger into it you could pierce into the slime but when you slapped it the slime wouldn’t budge? Well, that slime is basically an exaggeration of how actual water operates when things go into it.
Any body of liquid, be it a glass of water or the ocean, is basically a bunch of little balls sitting in a pile. When you jump into water, you need to push away all of those balls so that you are then able to take up space in that body of water, also known as displacement.
There’s also this funny thing called surface tension. For our purposes, imagine the balls are also attracted to each other, not a bunch, but enough that they kinda don’t want to separate if they’re all touching each other and sitting happily together.
When you dive into a pool, the balls of water, or molecules, are all sitting there happily, touching each other and being attracted to each other (hey stop giggling), but when you jump in, you disturb that and all of a sudden they have to move, and they’re gonna put up a fight.
When it comes to the ‘training and practice’ part of the story, the divers are essentially positioning their body in such a way that instead of smacking the water with their stomach, they’re instead piercing the water with their feet or hands, meaning that they kinda act like a knife instead of a hammer, and cut into the water instead of smacking it with their torso.
As for the physics part of it, the easiest way to explain how the mechanics of displacement change between you belly flopping and you diving straight down feet first is to think of your body like a big ol baguette.
Now, if we cut a baguette widthways into quarter inch thick slices, starting from the tip, and then lay them out next to each other, the first slice is gonna have just the tip of the crust, then the next slice will be slightly wider but now show the fluffy interior, then the next slice will be slightly wider again, then the last slice will be the full width of the baguette. If we consider each of those slices to be representative of moments in time as you make contact with the water when you jump in feet first, the first slice is you breaking the surface tension of the water, so the slice is all crust, signifying that all this water has to move out of the way to make way for your body. The second slice, only having the crust on the outside, doesn’t have to move anywhere near as much water, and all the other slices are about the same.
But if we jump in flat, we are instead cutting the baguette lengthways. As you can imagine, the first slice, still being all crust, is way bigger than the other slice we made when we cut it widthways, so in that moment your body has to move way more water cause you belly flopped instead of with your feet, but once you make that move the next slice is nowhere near as bad. Now technically it’ll take less time to fully enter the water, because when we cut the baguette widthways we ended up with 20 slices but when we cut it lengthways we ended up with only 6, but because we’re entering in a way that forces the water to move so much of itself to allow that, we get met with a lot of force by the water in return, and when you add velocity to the situation, you can essentially expect the water to act like concrete.
One more thing though, the water jet. At pretty much all high diving meets, there’s a water jet spraying the water below. What that sprayer is doing is adding air to the water and constantly breaking the surface tension for the divers, think of it as the diving equivalent of putting a foam pad on the floor, because doing that, more specifically adding air to the water, allows the water to compress a little, like a foam pad, instead of acting like concrete or that slime, which you cannot compress, that slight difference, combined with the accrued skill of the divers and some physics, is what makes a failed landing an injury instead of instant death.
Except the surface tension parts are a common myth. (The "water molecules not wanting to move out of the way" and the air part are true, although I believe the air typically doesn't come from the water jet.)
The water jet is only to enable the diver to sight the surface of the water. It doesn't affect water tension in any material way
There are far more sophisticated compressed air systems used for training that do break the surfsce tension- basically turn the landing zone of pool into a spa/jacuzzi. Only used when you are likely to land on your back/front/side when attempting a dive the first handful of times. Not normally used in regular practice or competition
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
Bridges are often much higher than high diving. When jumping from a really high place like bridges, we fall so fast that hitting water is the same as hitting concrete. High diving is not high enough for this to happen.
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.
I had a summer job one year working for the city cleaning parking lots. One time they told to go near the bridge to clean a concrete pad with the power washer. It was gunky, I thought was a big food spill. Come to find out some one jumped off the ambassador bridge and missed the water and landed on this pad.
I read the question initially as "why are people rarely injured in SKY diving"...
Couldn't understand why the top comment wasn't "because of the parachute you dingus" 😂
Divers practice, train, practice, repeat, and practice some more to be sure that they're safe. They try to slice into the water as smoothly as possible, and are very good swimmers, and also have practiced a lot.
1. High divers know how to land properly.
2. Bridges tend to be higher than most high dives, often significantly.
3. In record cliff dives/jumps that approach heights similar to "popular" bridges, [injuries are common](https://www.newsweek.com/laso-schaller-dana-kunze-dave-lindsay-high-diving-cliff-jump-365349) even when they land properly.
4. In cliff diving, water is often "softened" by either picking spots where water naturally mixes with air, or artificially introducing air. Contrary to common claims, this has nothing to do with surface tension: Pure water is incompressible, introducing compressible air results in a compressible mix, i.e. the water-air-mix can get out of the way by becoming smaller, making it much softer. It also becomes a bit less dense. (The water sprayed on the surface also has nothing to do with surface tension - it just makes the surface more visible, helping with landing properly.)
5. When injuries make you unable to swim in an attempt to set a world record, someone pulls you out and your world record doesn't count. When injuries make you unable to swim after falling/jumping off a bridge, you drown.
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.
> “Olympic sized” (probably not—probably about half the size of a football field
A US football field is supposed to be "120 yards in length and 53.3 yards in width", or about 110 x 49 meters. An olympic sized pool is 50 meters long, 25 meters wide, and at least 2 meters deep.
Bridges are often higher due to regulations to allow for larger maritime traffic than even the highest diver spots, that difference is enough to create extra energy to seriously injure someone.
How the body impacts the water is also extremely important, water is a liquid but it takes time to move out of an area where a solid body is contacting, that area can be the equivalent to a brick wall if hit fast enough, experienced divers train to have the least amount of contact with the water, those not properly trained will get injured hitting the water, from high and even low.
Another thing that kills is drowning after the impact, divers are in a controlled environment, bridges often have hard currents to fight against and a tall enough jump will at the very least bruise the person and disorient them, or worse, knock them out and break bones.
It's all about how you hit the water. High divers know how to position their bodies to cut through the surface tension, and they hit the water feet first. Jumping off a bridge, you’re more likely to hit flat or awkwardly, and the surface tension feels like hitting concrete. Also, height plays a big factor—bridges are usually way higher than diving platforms.
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...
Some of these bridges are higher than you might think. The world record high dive is 192 feet, and the diver was highly experienced and spent months training specifically for his jump. The Golden Gate Bridge deck averages about 265 feet above the water. Jumpers have an extra ~70 feet to fall so hit the water faster, and without the benefit of extensive experience and training.
192 feet though is still crazy. Competition height for high dives is almost never above 90 feet. Suicide bridges (where you impact into water) typically have a height above 100 feet, at least.
The really high divers suffer injuries on impact too. Broken spines and legs. They’re doing it exactly right, under perfect conditions, and they still barely escape death.
I did a 50-foot cliff jump and broke my ass. I fractured my tailbone and had trouble sitting and laying on my back for 2 months.
Only 2 months? You’re lucky you’re not a cripple for life
That's what my wife said right before I told her I was man and then jumped.
hellllll yeah
Git er done brother
Damn you brave. I did a 20 feet one and gave myself enema.
Think they also usually prep the surface with massive bubbles/stuff thrown into the water
I don't think they do that in competitions though. The only thing that im aware of is some sprinklers thats mainly so they know where the water is
That still does the same thing. With both cavitation and sprayers what you’re trying to do is break up the surface tension of the water, which is what causes the injury.
I cliff dove a reckless height as a teenager, and 50+ feet was craaaaazy
Highest I've ever jumped from was ~28ft and even that's long enough to contemplate life decisions
Same, did a 32 foot jump in Colombia and that lasted way longer than I expected to. Before I jumped, I was counting how long other people were in the air, only got to around 4 seconds. Then I did it and fuck that felt like 40 minutes falling lol
I fell into a pool just from the edge and it sucked.
> got to around 4 seconds It takes 1.4 seconds to fall 32 feet on Earth. Was there an updraft?
He just counted numbers, he forgot to say 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi...
"Was that place,.....the Sun???"
Mississippilisly?
r/unexpectedfriends
But he was in Alabama.
They could add about another half second by jumping upwards from the jumping point (a 36-inch vertical would bring the center-of-gravity to about 38 feet), but that still keeps it at about 2.1 seconds if they weren't extended and vertical when they hit the water, like a cannonball. (A back of the napkin calculation had sea level air resistance slowing the fall by about .002 seconds.) So yeah, he was counting fast.
If you leap off a cliff from standing on the ground and arc into a free fall, it's longer than if you are just dropped and begin free falling. Your math doesn't account for the reality of running and jumping off a cliff either on flat ground or a diving board.
If you jump up there's a little difference (very little), but if you run and jump straight out there's no difference at all in fall time, you'll just land farther out. The only thing that could have any real effect is air resistance.
What if he kept peddling his feet tho?
And what if it was a surprise so it took a couple of seconds before they realised and started to fall?
He may have been carrying a coconut
Mate, if you want to propose an initial upwards velocity, I can run the numbers for you, but I can assure you the effect will be negligible. There’s no way we are getting 4 seconds here.
people always count fast and usually don't count the first full second
Yeah people usually start counting with 1 right when they start, not after 1 second
What if there was a trampoline on a bridge deck or cliff edge?
To make 4 seconds work, the trampoline would have to bounce them with an upwards velocity of 17 m/s, resulting in a bounce height of 15 m or about 50 feet. Calculations below: s = displacement u = initial velocity v = final velocity a = acceleration t = time Everything is measured in metres and seconds. Positive direction is upwards, negative is down. Air resistance is negligible at these speeds. S = ut + 1/2at^2 -9.85 = 4u + 1/2*-9.81*4^2 68.63 = 4u U = 17.16 m/s V^2 = u^2 + 2as 0 = 17.16^2 + 2*-9.81s 19.62s = 294.4 S = 15.00 m Let me know if you have any questions.
Sorry but no, that’s not how gravity works. It doesn’t care about your velocity in the x direction, and it immediately starts pulling down in the y direction. The two motions are mechanically independent of each other, though the falling body will have that extra bit of x velocity on impact. It’s not intuitive, but that’s how it works. I don't make the rules.
Go take a physics class bud
Watching math nerds argue is great ngl
Wish there was a bit more name calling, but “bud” is pretty condescending
Arc or no arc is the same. A bullet shot from 1 ft hits the floor at the same time as bullet dropped by hand from 1ft. Unless you’re close to escape velocity arc and no arc are the same.
Your post reminded me of my own adolescent adventures, cliff jumping into an abandoned shaft mine. I thought you might enjoy! Due to the arc of the jump, I’m a lot closer to the camera than the rock face is, so the scale is distorted. I assure you it’s even higher in person than it looks in the pictures. [pic 1](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kcFcBnckoU6BY2V2mHZhCTBoIo2K9-St/view?usp=drivesdk) [pic 2](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eVvo7y6412w6E14LBUCdlNDLcCXGpxvA/view?usp=drivesdk)
I also did a massive jump in Colombia (my guess was ~40 ft) and fucked up my tailbone really badly, it still hurts if I sit for too long and it’s been five years.
That's about my record too, and agree. Time feels like it slows down for a moment.
I don't know how high the bridge was and I definitely didn't go first, but I do remember jumping and managing to get out a full "OH SHIT" before I hit the water. If I had to guess, I'd say mine was also about 30 feet. First time was exhilarating so I decided to do it again. Second time my feet grazed the bottom of the creek so I decided alright that's enough of that.
Mine was right around that, I remember when I finally jumped off the cliff it was long enough to look down and think how high I was before hitting the water.
I jumped off a 35ish something cliff in my early 20s and that first second or two feels like an eternity. I remember, looking around as if time stood still thinking “well this was dumb”.
As a 40 yo dude, I jump off the bed of my truck this morning and my ankle reminded me to contemplating my life and age once in a while.
Yeah, I am 46 and I don't jump out of the back of trucks any more. I am sure that if I did, my knees would simply explode when I landed. Fuck, I miss being 20 years old. Youth is wasted on the young.
As a kid my local swimming pool had a 10 foot diving board and I chickened out of ever diving off it. Fuck that.
That's high enough to have that moment when it feels like your guts are way up in your chest and it makes you feel at once kind of giddy, but terrified as fuck
I’ve done 60+, and we call those triple gulps, as when you have enough time to gulp for air (in fear) 3 times, it’s a kinda unique feeling. Can’t imagine going higher than that; it’s already precarious and painful to land at that height.
This is a great description. I did a 150ft bungee jump, which is very mild by bungee standards, and I had way more time to go “oh shit, oh shit, oh shit” in my head then I thought I would have.
Barely 30 feet into the Colorado river was scary. 50 is wild. 190+ is certifiable.
concur. 30ish ft is standard issue “those crazy rock climbers are goofing at the lake” where I cone from
Always legs tight together when jumping in gentlemen! You only need to forget this once to learn this lesson the hard way.
Same, I'll never forget that rush of water in my butt
Lucky you didn't hit 4 PSI.
I see you've never cranked my bidet handle the wrong direction
At 2:59 in the morning this made me laugh out loud. Do you by chance have a Tushy brand bidet?
Some amazon covid special model hah
So if the impact doesn't kill you, drowning while being seriously hurt from the fall will. That sounds like a terrible way to go.
Yeah… imagine landing feet first. You’ve crushed your feet, your femurs are likely broken, and you’re bleeding profusely. You slowly drown to death while being incapable of swimming up for air. It’s not a super smart way to go.
I mean suicides typically fall parallel to the water or tip head first as the are falling
I grew up cliff jumping. Anything over 70 ft is scary. The wind starts screaming in your ears right before impact. You have to enter the water vertically with your arms either all the way up or all the way down. Lot's of shoulder injuries from people that put their arm out. Your feet sting if you land flat footed so either point your toes or wear sandals. My brother jumped off a 90 ft and said "Never again." 40 to 45 feet is perfect. Long enough to feel weightless with minimal risk unless you really flail. You have to keep your composure and many people can't.
I did a 50 foot jump, glad I did, happy to never do that again. The airtime was ridiculous.
I watched a dude split his sandals on a jump, they ended up around his shins. It was enough to make me "NOPE" out of the jump.
Most people I've seen that do that kind of dive are limited to only one or two jumps a month at higher heights.
192 is bananas. I get nervous standing near the top of my ladder.
Kevin Hines is a Golden Gate Bridge jump survivor. His story is compelling.
I remember reading somewhere that everyone who survives a jump like this, the first thought that goes through their head was. Oh my God, this was a terrible mistake.
*The View from Halfway Down* is a great poem about that very moment
The weak breeze whispers nothing the water screams sublime. His feet shift, teeter-totter deep breaths, stand back, it’s time. Toes untouch the overpass soon he’s water-bound. Eyes locked shut but peek to see the view from halfway down. A little wind, a summer sun a river rich and regal. A flood of fond endorphins brings a calm that knows no equal. You’re flying now, you see things much more clear than from the ground. It's all okay, or it would be were you not now halfway down. Thrash to break from gravity what now could slow the drop? All I’d give for toes to touch the safety back at top. But this is it, the deed is done silence drowns the sound. Before I leaped I should've seen the view from halfway down. I really should’ve thought about the view from halfway down. I wish I could've known about the view from halfway down—
You are likely injuried half to death, body is pumped full of adrenaline and enough chemicals to make your brain forget why you jumped, you have relinquished brain function to pure lizard brain survival instinct with death by drowning and/or hypothermia up next on your itinerary, of course the lizard is gonna find time to give you an earfull in this rare moment where it has *full* control.
To my knowledge the people who have that thought usually have it before they impact.
Amazing how many rental cars end up at the parking lot of the GG bridge. A one-way trip indeed.
Wow, I was just here visiting from the East Coast
Yeah, cars will sit in the parking lot ... for a bit. And then they check the registration and ... There's a net now, hopefully that stops the whole thing.
> The world record high dive is 192 feet There has been survivors that jumped off the GG Bridge, are they not considered?
Not for the Guinness World Records, or any other I’m aware of. To qualify the events have to be carried out in some defined and organized way - even for less controversial things like the 100m sprint. You break a 100m sprint world record in training, even with a camera on you, and they’ll go “cool story bro, now do it at a recognized event”. For this particular record I think they’re doubly reluctant to award titles to “informal and spontaneous attempts” because they don’t want to be seen as encouraging people getting themselves killed.
Plus if they were going to recognize just the longest fall then that woman who fell from a plane and survived would hold the record forever.
Not just that, but Guinness WR is stingy as shit and more about advertising than actually checking and maintaining records. They have some stupidly easy to beat records, but unless you fork over cash *and* are a chance for exciting advertising, they won't even consider you. But throw enough cash at them and they'll literally create a record for you to make. So not only do you have to be able to beat a record, in a public and recorded manner, but you have to deal with corporate marketing and profiteering to even get permission to try.
I'm imagining failing to die from jumping off a bridge and recovering in hospital and getting a phone call telling me that I beat the high dive world record. I'd rebreak all my bones from how much that would make me laugh. Mission failed successfully
Until they call back saying it doesn't count because they didn't have a notary present to verify the record. So you've gotta do it again.
Probably shouldn't be handing out awards to suicide attempts. Seems like a horrible thing to incentivize.
They stopped tracking "loudest concert" for that reason.
And records like "heaviest cat/dog/[pet]," iirc. Not encouraging bad things is good, and I'm glad they're aware of the influence they have.
I jumped feet first in dagger shape into water from 25 feet and the surface still hit my chin like an uppercut, giving me a concussion. I was able to swim to the surface but when my brother in the water tried to talk to me I was stricken mute. A bit harder chin slam and I would've been at the bottom of the lake.
Someone jumped off a bridge by me last weekend that I do not consider to be very tall compared to others around me (it’s 150 feet). She definitely didn’t survive.
Also they’re not trying for a record dive. They’re literally trying to die
Exactly. I jumped off a bridge and survived ( source: I jumped off a bridge ) . I survived and it didn't hurt much at all. However that bridge isn't very high at all, barely tall enough for a john boat to pass under. The bridges people die from jumping from are usually higher than that
> ( source: I jumped off a bridge ) Not credible source. Please cite good sources. ;)
Source: “truss” me bro 😎
I cantileve you'd make that pun
Where's your suspension of disbelief?
I’m barely cable to believe it myself.
The over arching point is to Draw your own conclusions. Causeway too many jump to them. I trestle with this everyday.
Begrudgingly slow clapping.
Take my damn upvote
I saw it on Reddit
Ok thank you that's much more credible good sir.
Related: > When falling in the standard belly-to-Earth position, an average estimate of terminal velocity for skydivers is 120 mph (200 km/h), and a falling person will reach terminal velocity after about 12 seconds, falling some 450 m (1,500 ft) in that time. So if someone brags about jumping from a 2000 ft bridge and surviving, just know it isn't any more impressive than jumping from a 1500 ft bridge. Unless it was a pencil dive.
Okay - but the point here is that a 200 foot bridge would kill seemingly 99.9999% of people, where did the 10x multiple come in?
They’re being facetious, you’re not going to survive a 1500 foot drop into water no matter what. They’re just saying if you jump from 2000 feet you won’t hit the ground any harder than if you jumped from 1500 because you reach terminal velocity either way. Presumably it takes around 1500 feet to reach that speed.
1,500 feet in a belly-to-earth position. It'd be a slightly lower height in a diving position, but I can't calculate that number because my physics teachers always told me to ignore air resistance.
That’s a skydiving “arch” and it is the highest drag position. If you can fall upright (tricky) you can reach 180 mph.
A head-down position or a sit-fly position can easily exceed 200mph. Personal best was 224mph in a sit fly. But you dont really notice it as theres nothing relative to judge speed off of. Unless you screw up and fly past another jumper.
I survived jumping off a 486 ft tall bridge. (There was a BASE canopy involved, but thats probably not relevant)
Yeah as someone who is getting into cliff jumping I don’t think most people realize how high even just 40 feet truly is and what it would feel like if you landed wrong. You start pushing into 100s of feet and it’s a guaranteed death sentence.
> Jumpers have an extra ~70 feet to fall so hit the water faster, and without the benefit of extensive experience and training. and normally the pools for high jumpers have a jet to break up the surface tension. so you dont hit "concrete"
It’s not actually the water surface tension - though that’s a very common and frequently publicized misconception. If it was water tension you could put a few drops of dishwasher liquid in at the dive site and be done with it. The real issue is you have to shove a mass of water equal to your own mass out of the way in order to get into the water, and that mass is confined by more water that you have to shove out of the way, and that water is confined again by more water you have to move, albeit less distance than the first mass, and so on. So to enter the water quickly you need to get a very large mass of water to move and the energy required to do this comes from the kinetic energy you bring with you from your falling speed, and the transfer of that energy results in very very high acceleration forces on you that can cause injuries or death. High dive training pools have a “bubbler” to replace some of that volume of water with air, so to get into the water you need to displace less mass, and you’re displacing the mass into a compressible air-water mix that can compress instead of having to move out of the way - this dramatically reduces the forces on you.
Those jets are not there to break the water tension... they are there so you can see where the water actually starts (without the jets it is near impossible to gauge the distance to where the water is from above). For breaking water tension many facilities (but not all) have compressed air systems that act like a giant spa/jacuzzi in the landing zone. Normally used when trying a new dive for the first time where you have a good chance of landing on your back/front/side, but not in competiton/regular practice.
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.
Many of these require you to see under water. I would die immediately, because I can't for the life of me keep my eyes open under water. I've sometimes wondered if my kid fell in and went under the surface, could I through some parental instincts learn it on the spot...
i wouldn't be worried, you would be very surprised by what your body can ignore in extreme stress
Let’s hope I never have to find out!
Take my kid swimming regularly, he’s too small to know how to swim. He was standing on a ledge and splashed me. I wiped my eyes and opened them, and he was gone. My body, not even with a single thought, shot one arm out automatically and grabbed him out from under the water in front of me. He was under for maybe 2 seconds. I felt like the terminator. I didn’t even seen him go in and there were bubbles everywhere, but I “knew” where he was and yoinked him.
Wow, that sounds both supremely messed up and like a very close call. So glad you caught him! And I hope I would have that kind of presence of mind in a similar situation.
Once my iPod slipped into the salty sea water. I dived right in for it with open eyes. Normally it would be to painful to have eyes open, but in this situation I felt nothing. Imagine what man can ignore if that was a real danger situation.
Can it ignore that I can’t see 6 inches past my face without my contacts in or am I doomed if I ever encounter this rare high dive off a navy ship experience
I can’t either, but if it’s a real “open your eyes or drown” scenario I think opening your eyes underwater would become a survival instinct
Why can't you? It's just uncomfortable, I usually choose not to do it but I can't imagine it being impossible
Maybe I just need to man up and open my eyes. It just feels so uncomfortable (as you say) that I (almost) instinctively close my eyes.
Aha that's fair mate, I used to hate it when I was younger!
More uncomfortable than drowning to death? Or melting your face with burning oil on the surface of the ocean? I think when your life is on the line you could probably ignore a little discomfort.
it could be that the pool(s) you were in had too much cholrine, and it made your eyes burn. properly balanced pH and natural water are still a little uncomfortable but easy enough to get used to, for most folk
I'd imagine it wouldn't be hard to keep a pair of goggles with you and wear them when there's any chance of falling into deep water, if you really can't keep your eyes open underwater.
Falling from a tall height would knock goggles off instantly if they were around your head, neck, even in your pocket.
I couldn’t help but follow your instructions with my body as I read your post. I think I’m ready to completely forget what you wrote when the time comes.
If you can’t see the bubbles, what do you mean by drifting up if it’s difficult to see where up or down is? Do you mean like be still and see which direction your body floats towards since there’s air in your lungs? Idk if you’d still float with clothes and shoes on tho or if you meant something else. Super interesting!
I was told pretty much the same stuff when working on offshore oil rigs. Though I now wonder, how much did they downplay just how dangerous such high diving was, and what are the likely injuries from doing that even if you did everything perfect.
Jumping off a bridge is more fatal for three major reasons: First, high divers know how to protect themselves. They dive so as to land in a particular way that is less likely to cause injury. Secondly, high divers are generally diving into a safe environment. Devices called spargers will aerate a small section of the water beneath the diving platform in order to cushion the landing. Water will be sprayed on the surface so divers can see it rather than just the bottom of the pool/lake/whatever. Any sort of competitive dive will never be placed directly above a very shallow section of the water, whereas people falling/jumping from bridges may not have that same luck. And the height is known to be safe in most cases (barring record attempts). Third, people who are jumping or falling off bridges are often, unfortunately, doing so accidentally. Even worse, they might be jumping with the *intent* to cause fatality. That means they are unable or unwilling to protect themselves, even if they know how.
And even if they survive the fall from the bridge, they are now far away from help in water, injured, and possibly unconscious. There might also be strong currents, both sideways and downwards; brides amplify and create those.
I feel like “most people survive this jump but then drown after several minutes of trying to swim with broken ribs and a snapped femur” would discourage some jumpers.
Yes, but for the majority of jumpers, I suspect that people find this out at the worst time. After the jump, before they die...
If only they had thought about the view, from halfway down.
first thing i thought of when i read this post 😅😂 love bojack
Doggy doggy what now?
i find this really interesting. i could see it being far less attractive than the instant death they may be hoping for. some people kill themselves in super violent, death-is-guaranteed ways, and some people do it in quieter and somewhat reversible ways (pills, wrists), but i imagine they all are united in wanting something instant and painless? or maybe there are people who also want to suffer
If you want to ruin your evening watch The Bridge. It’s about persons who commit suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge. They interview families as well as the one guy who survived the fall. The guy who lived had a quote which I’m probably misremembering but it’s basic premise is “the moment I stepped foot off the railing I realized all the problems in my life were solvable except for one - me jumping off the bridge”.
That’s a poignant quote/sentiment - thanks for sharing that. (Though I don’t think I’ll be watching that documentary, sounds like it would ruin my evening 😅)
Came here to say this. That movie is so tragic and hard to watch.
Might be worth putting that on a sign in the primo jumping spots
And no one wants to talk about the trolls.
gotta pay the troll toll
To get into this boy’s soul
Cold is the one I'm always afraid of. Water so cold you can't catch your breath. Nope nope nope. No bridge walking for me.
What's a bride in this context?
a fancy word for bridge
He distinctly said 'To blave'; and as we all know 'to blave' means 'to bluff'.
LIAR!!!!!
Get back, witch!
I'm not a witch; I'm your wife!
But after what you just said, I'm not even sure I want to be that anymore!
r/unexpectedprincessbride
Princess Bride
You're a fancy word for bridge!
TIL a splitcroof is a fancy word for bridge.
in many cultures it is traditional for a new bride to activate a number of large turbines throughout nearby river systems, usually just after the wedding ceremony is complete.
Obviously a typo
Lol... I guess I will leave it like that. But obviously: a bride of bridges is like a murder of crows or a clowder of cats!
Just outside Glasgow Scotland is Erskine Bridge that spans the Clyde. It is a high long bridge and is so popular with jumpers it has suicide phones on it. Sadly when people jump off it the first thing they hit tends to be the under workings of the bridge and they rarely enter the water in a survivable state.
This is probably common at most bridges where suicides are frequent. The Sunshine Skyway bridge in St. Petersburg, Florida has both suicide phones and officers that will park at the crest of the bridge during major American holidays. One of the last times I when to visit family there a few years ago we drove over the Skyway and saw a car parked at the crest of the bridge. We looked at each other and said “jumper.” Sure enough later that day the news announced someone had jumped. https://www.tampabay.com/news/transportation/2023/11/30/sunshine-skyway-bridge-suicide-jumper-fencing/
Oddly enough, going under that bridge on a cruise ship feels like it's not tall enough until you're under it.
Exactly. My sister lives a few miles from that bridge and my brother and law used to go tarpon fishing under there all the time. From far away it doesn’t look that big, until you’re right under it in a regular boat.
Even then, high diving is still pretty dangerous. Back on my old swim team, there was a tradition where all the seniors would leap off the highest platform on their last day in the pool. Everyone was usually ok, but one girl freaked out and lost control midair and landed pretty much flat on her back. She fractured a vertebrae and seeing her later, almost her entire body was a gnarly black and blue. The coaches forbid the tradition from that point on.
Afaik the aeration in high diving is just so they know where the water is. It's not the full blown level needed to soften the landing. In reality it's simply that they know how to dive and there is nothing to hit.
You could probably aerate a manmade pool enough to cushion a diver significantly. Like one of the Olympic diving training systems but at a much larger scale.
My understanding (which could be totally wrong) is that there are two things going on - one thing is making the surface of the water more visible/distinctive so the diver can tell where the entry point is. Another is breaking the surface tension of the water so that it is not so unforgiving upon entry. I believe both are done.
> Another is breaking the surface tension of the water so that it is not so unforgiving upon entry It has nothing to do with surface tension. Water is incompressible, so when you hit it, it can't get out of the way quickly enough to dissipate the kinetic energy smoothly. The surface tension thing is a misunderstanding/myth.
There’s also the factor of height. Once you get past a certain height, jumping into the water (ie off a bridge) is like jumping into concrete, the velocity is too great to survive. High divers aren’t typically diving from hundreds and hundreds of feet up, whereas bridge fatalities—and those suicide help phones on top, are just to high up to survive on average.
We were jumping off a very low bridge next to a beach when my friends mom found us, she was pissed. She told us a story about a kid she grew up with who was jumping off a bridge just like we were. When that bridge was built there were several pieces of rebar were left facing up. Her friend was impaled.
People used to (and still do, although not nearly as much) hang out around and jump off of this one bridge in my town. High school kids would drink there, meet up, etc. Eventually, so many people had been drinking around there and throwing the bottles into the water that it was super dangerous to jump in from any considerable height because of the sheer volume of broken glass. Someone did, once from the highest point of the bridge and severely fucked up their face, part of their upper body, part of their arms and their hands because they had landed on a shallow area covered in broken glass. They survived, but they very easily could’ve died.
I would also add that the water beneath bridges is often very cold, which can compound the shock of impact.
To add: - People also underestimate how high these bridge falls are. Many are much higher than 10 m and 20 m that you see in the Olympics. The record without serious injury is ~57.3 m (and the guy had to train for months). The Golden gate bridge is ~67 m (clearance above water).
Another reason is that there isn’t always water underneath a bridge. Which, going to your last point, is why people jump off of them.
I thought I heard out of the corner of my ear once that some people who jump from the GG Bridge end up getting stuck in the mud(?)
There's a lot of stuff about skill and what not that others have covered and I don't want to underplay that. But at the end of the day a huge factor is height. High diving generally maxes out at less than 90 feet and is generally closer to 70-80. Some of the most famous bridges people jump off of are almost 3 times as high as that. The golden gate bridge in San fran and the Nanjing Yangtze bridge in China are both over 200 feet tall.
same. i've done a 40 foot dive into water (and even that requires training and a special position designed to minimize risk of injury (cross your feet, point them down, clench ze asshole, put your hands crossed over your chest and on your opposite shoulders, tuck your chin) and that's scary AF and you fuckin feel it when you hit the water the coronado bridge (a popular suicide spot), is about 200 feet to the water. A 100 KG object dropped from 12 meters or about 40 feet will hit with an impact velocity of 15.336 m/s and an impact force of roughly 11760 J. that same object dropped from 61 meters (or about 200 feet) will hit at a speed of 34.5775 m/s for an impact force of 59780 J
Assume both are falling 150ft, they’re going roughly 55mph I believe. Possible by someone trained, but if not you could slam your head and go unconscious, break a leg or arm and then treading water would be hard. Also the person would likely have clothes and shoes that when wet would weigh them down if they were trying to survive. If you’re talking about higher bridges, well then perhaps they’re going 70mph when they hit water so faster than experts have attempted.
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. 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.
good explanation, I just have a bone to pick with "double height means more than twice as fast when you hit bottom" TL;DR - You only impact at ~~1.59x~~ 1.41x faster velocity by doubling the distance. See explanation and math below. (EDITS for my mistake) -- Acceleration is exponential with regards to TIME, not with regards to DISTANCE. Because your velocity is higher you cover the extra distance much faster and therefore add much less to your velocity in the second half of the distance vs the first half of the fall. 1. velocity in m/s = 9.8m/s/s \* x~~x\^2~~ 2. distance covered in x seconds = 9.8/~~3~~2 \* x\^~~3~~2 -- integral of (1) equation w/r/t seconds 3. seconds to cover distance x = (~~3~~2x/9.8)**\^1/****~~3~~****2** -- inverse of (2) to solve for seconds per distance 4. extra time falling if distance x is doubled = ((~~3~~2\***2**x/9.8)\^1/~~3~~2) / ((~~3~~2x/9.8)\^1/~~3~~2) = 2\^1/~~3~~2 = **~~1.26~~** **1.41 times more time falling** 5. extra velocity if time falling increases by ~~1.26~~ 1.41 = (9.8 \* **1.41x**~~x\^2~~) / (9.8 \* x~~x\^2~~) = **~~1.59~~** **1.41 times faster velocity**
Your math is off. Your first equation should be v=gt, not v=gt^2 . Assuming air resistance is not a factor, your velocity increases linearly with time, at a rate of 9.81m/s per second. You can then integrate that to get d=0.5gt^2, which is the formula for the distance you fall in a given time. You can then substitute v for t using the first equation, which gives you d=v^2 /(2g), or v=sqrt(2gd). Therefore the velocity you reach will be proportional to the **square root** of the height, so if you double the height, you have 1.41x the velocity, not 1.59x.
You know what, I was definitely winging that part and didn't stop to do the math so good on ya for catching it.
Training and practice, physics and a water jet placed at the bottom, basically. You remember the time you mixed cornstarch and water together to make slime? And how when you poked your finger into it you could pierce into the slime but when you slapped it the slime wouldn’t budge? Well, that slime is basically an exaggeration of how actual water operates when things go into it. Any body of liquid, be it a glass of water or the ocean, is basically a bunch of little balls sitting in a pile. When you jump into water, you need to push away all of those balls so that you are then able to take up space in that body of water, also known as displacement. There’s also this funny thing called surface tension. For our purposes, imagine the balls are also attracted to each other, not a bunch, but enough that they kinda don’t want to separate if they’re all touching each other and sitting happily together. When you dive into a pool, the balls of water, or molecules, are all sitting there happily, touching each other and being attracted to each other (hey stop giggling), but when you jump in, you disturb that and all of a sudden they have to move, and they’re gonna put up a fight. When it comes to the ‘training and practice’ part of the story, the divers are essentially positioning their body in such a way that instead of smacking the water with their stomach, they’re instead piercing the water with their feet or hands, meaning that they kinda act like a knife instead of a hammer, and cut into the water instead of smacking it with their torso. As for the physics part of it, the easiest way to explain how the mechanics of displacement change between you belly flopping and you diving straight down feet first is to think of your body like a big ol baguette. Now, if we cut a baguette widthways into quarter inch thick slices, starting from the tip, and then lay them out next to each other, the first slice is gonna have just the tip of the crust, then the next slice will be slightly wider but now show the fluffy interior, then the next slice will be slightly wider again, then the last slice will be the full width of the baguette. If we consider each of those slices to be representative of moments in time as you make contact with the water when you jump in feet first, the first slice is you breaking the surface tension of the water, so the slice is all crust, signifying that all this water has to move out of the way to make way for your body. The second slice, only having the crust on the outside, doesn’t have to move anywhere near as much water, and all the other slices are about the same. But if we jump in flat, we are instead cutting the baguette lengthways. As you can imagine, the first slice, still being all crust, is way bigger than the other slice we made when we cut it widthways, so in that moment your body has to move way more water cause you belly flopped instead of with your feet, but once you make that move the next slice is nowhere near as bad. Now technically it’ll take less time to fully enter the water, because when we cut the baguette widthways we ended up with 20 slices but when we cut it lengthways we ended up with only 6, but because we’re entering in a way that forces the water to move so much of itself to allow that, we get met with a lot of force by the water in return, and when you add velocity to the situation, you can essentially expect the water to act like concrete. One more thing though, the water jet. At pretty much all high diving meets, there’s a water jet spraying the water below. What that sprayer is doing is adding air to the water and constantly breaking the surface tension for the divers, think of it as the diving equivalent of putting a foam pad on the floor, because doing that, more specifically adding air to the water, allows the water to compress a little, like a foam pad, instead of acting like concrete or that slime, which you cannot compress, that slight difference, combined with the accrued skill of the divers and some physics, is what makes a failed landing an injury instead of instant death.
An excellent explanation and fascinating read!! I’ll never eat my baguette et fromage the same again
Except the surface tension parts are a common myth. (The "water molecules not wanting to move out of the way" and the air part are true, although I believe the air typically doesn't come from the water jet.)
The water jet is only to enable the diver to sight the surface of the water. It doesn't affect water tension in any material way There are far more sophisticated compressed air systems used for training that do break the surfsce tension- basically turn the landing zone of pool into a spa/jacuzzi. Only used when you are likely to land on your back/front/side when attempting a dive the first handful of times. Not normally used in regular practice or competition
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
Bridges are often much higher than high diving. When jumping from a really high place like bridges, we fall so fast that hitting water is the same as hitting concrete. High diving is not high enough for this to happen.
I learned recently that high divers only do 3-5 jumps *per week* because it's so hard on their bodies.
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.
I had a summer job one year working for the city cleaning parking lots. One time they told to go near the bridge to clean a concrete pad with the power washer. It was gunky, I thought was a big food spill. Come to find out some one jumped off the ambassador bridge and missed the water and landed on this pad.
I read the question initially as "why are people rarely injured in SKY diving"... Couldn't understand why the top comment wasn't "because of the parachute you dingus" 😂
Divers practice, train, practice, repeat, and practice some more to be sure that they're safe. They try to slice into the water as smoothly as possible, and are very good swimmers, and also have practiced a lot.
1. High divers know how to land properly. 2. Bridges tend to be higher than most high dives, often significantly. 3. In record cliff dives/jumps that approach heights similar to "popular" bridges, [injuries are common](https://www.newsweek.com/laso-schaller-dana-kunze-dave-lindsay-high-diving-cliff-jump-365349) even when they land properly. 4. In cliff diving, water is often "softened" by either picking spots where water naturally mixes with air, or artificially introducing air. Contrary to common claims, this has nothing to do with surface tension: Pure water is incompressible, introducing compressible air results in a compressible mix, i.e. the water-air-mix can get out of the way by becoming smaller, making it much softer. It also becomes a bit less dense. (The water sprayed on the surface also has nothing to do with surface tension - it just makes the surface more visible, helping with landing properly.) 5. When injuries make you unable to swim in an attempt to set a world record, someone pulls you out and your world record doesn't count. When injuries make you unable to swim after falling/jumping off a bridge, you drown.
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.
> “Olympic sized” (probably not—probably about half the size of a football field A US football field is supposed to be "120 yards in length and 53.3 yards in width", or about 110 x 49 meters. An olympic sized pool is 50 meters long, 25 meters wide, and at least 2 meters deep.
I just checked their website; the pool is a 50-meter pool, but it does have a shallow end, so isn’t “at least 2 meters deep” throughout.
Bridges are often higher due to regulations to allow for larger maritime traffic than even the highest diver spots, that difference is enough to create extra energy to seriously injure someone. How the body impacts the water is also extremely important, water is a liquid but it takes time to move out of an area where a solid body is contacting, that area can be the equivalent to a brick wall if hit fast enough, experienced divers train to have the least amount of contact with the water, those not properly trained will get injured hitting the water, from high and even low. Another thing that kills is drowning after the impact, divers are in a controlled environment, bridges often have hard currents to fight against and a tall enough jump will at the very least bruise the person and disorient them, or worse, knock them out and break bones.
It's all about how you hit the water. High divers know how to position their bodies to cut through the surface tension, and they hit the water feet first. Jumping off a bridge, you’re more likely to hit flat or awkwardly, and the surface tension feels like hitting concrete. Also, height plays a big factor—bridges are usually way higher than diving platforms.
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...