Skip to main content

Bridge of sighs

A frustrated commuter in the Chinese city of Guangzhou pushed a man off a bridge in an attempt to reduce a traffic delay. A man had been standing on the bridge and threatening to commit suicide, which held up traffic for five hours. Angered by the traffic delays and the huge congestion that had arisen, the commuter jostled his way past a police cordon and shoved the would-be suicide off the bridge. Luckily, police had placed an air cushion underneath and although the man fell 8m, he survived the incident wi
February 29, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
A frustrated commuter in the Chinese city of Guangzhou pushed a man off a bridge in an attempt to reduce a traffic delay. A man had been standing on the bridge and threatening to commit suicide, which held up traffic for five hours. Angered by the traffic delays and the huge congestion that had arisen, the commuter jostled his way past a police cordon and shoved the would-be suicide off the bridge. Luckily, police had placed an air cushion underneath and although the man fell 8m, he survived the incident with wrist and back injuries. The commuter explained that the would-be suicide's actions were selfish and was against the public interest. The man had become depressed over debts arising from a failed building project. He was (at least) the 12th person to threaten suicide from the Haizu Bridge in Guangzhou but the first known to actually fall from the structure.

Related Content

  • Enhancing policy and action for a safe mobility
    April 12, 2022
    Safe Mobility remains a “hard to abate” challenge especially when it comes to road safety. Road crashes result in an estimated 1.35 million deaths and 50 million injuries worldwide/year.
  • Highway 407 Revisited – smart tollroad extension
    June 7, 2016
    In the late 1990s, World Highways published a supplement on construction of Canada’s Highway 407, the world’s first all-electronic toll road. But how successful has it been? David Arminas reports from Toronto The head office for 407 ETR Concession Company is a low-rise building next to exit 59, just north of Toronto, Canada’s economic powerhouse. The building may be non-descript but inside is the advanced technical heart of Highway 407 ETR – Express Toll Route. It houses the latest toll monitoring techno
  • Crashed, again
    March 23, 2016
    A valuable Pagani Zonda supercar has been crashed for the second time in the UK. The car was being driven back from its annual MOT test by the bodyguard of the current owner. However the driver lost control of the high-performance vehicle and crashed it into a fence. In court the driver explained that he had been shifting his seat for better comfort, when his foot slipped onto the accelerator pedal. However this account differed from his original statement to the police in which he claimed he had swerved to
  • Smart road test facility in Virginia
    July 28, 2015
    A test stretch of road in the US is playing a valuable role in developing technology and boosting traffic safety -*Tom Gibson writes Located a short distance from the Virginia Tech campus in the mountains of rural southwest Virginia in the mid-Atlantic region of United States, the Virginia Smart Road looks like a conventional road. But venturing to either end of the 3.5km-long thoroughfare reveals that it actually goes nowhere, at least for now. The result of a plan conceived back in the 1980s, the Vi