The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, one of the world's most beautiful spots, is also the most popular place to commit suicide.

Since it opened in 1937, more than 1,300 people have leapt to their deaths in San Francisco Bay — more than anywhere else on Earth.

Last year 38 people jumped off the bridge. Another 19 have killed themselves there so far this year, including Olivia Crowther, 23, a University of Sussex graduate from Gloucestershire who flew to San Francisco after surfing suicide websites.

Now, the bridge authority has decided finally to hang a circus-like safety net beneath the bridge to catch jumpers.

The decision follows decades of debate between mental health experts, who argued that would-be suicides could be saved, and architectural preservationists, who wanted to save the bridge from an unsightly addition.

The ruling was influenced by a public outcry over the 2007 documentary The Bridge, which was blamed for a surge in suicides. Using cameras with telephoto lenses, the director Eric Steel filmed 23 of the 24 suicides on the bridge in 2004.

Among those who campaigned for a barrier was Kevin Hines, who was featured in the film and is one of only 28 people known to have survived the 67m (220ft) drop.

Mr Hines, who had bipolar disorder, spent 40 minutes crying on the bridge without being approached by anyone except a German tourist, who asked if he would take her photograph. Recalling the incident, he said: “I hurtled over the railing with my hands and I was falling headfirst. The second my hands left the bar of the railing I said, 'I don't want to die. What am I going to do? This is it. I'm dead'.

“So I said, 'Well, maybe if I get feet-first, maybe, maybe I'll live.' So I thought, 'All right, it's worth a shot'.

“I pushed myself back somehow. I landed literally like I was sitting down, maybe a little more elevated with the legs. I hit with my feet. I guess the water treaded through my boots a little bit, so maybe helped the impact. The boots were pretty tough. I went down about 40-50 feet. Didn't know which way was up or down. I thought, 'Am I still alive?' Because it's, like, a four to seven-second fall.” The plastic-coated steel safety net will be the same colour as the bridge and will hang six metres below the roadway and extend six metres from each side. It could still take years to install because the $50 million (£29.6million) funding has to be found and a study has to be conducted on the net's impact on birds.

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