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The Golden Gate Bridge Essay

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The Golden Gate Bridge is “considered to be one of the best and most beautiful examples of bridge design” (Poel and Royakkers 110). Unfortunately, this bridge is also "the US's most popular place to commit suicide" (110). Due to this fact, bridge designers decided that they needed to consider the option of installing some sort of suicide prevention system. Before any decision was made, the ramifications of both implementing a system and not implementing one had to be considered. Deciding whether or not to implement a system calls for an in-depth analysis of the ethics. One must identify the ethical dilemmas present, and provide analysis on the effects on all the stakeholders involved. The suicide barrier presents numerous ethical …show more content…

The last dilemma faced is whose life is of more value, those who use the bridge for transportation or those who use it for suicide. This is a dilemma because “the screen might create dangerous wind resistance and make the bridge structurally unstable,” which increases the risk of those who use the bridge for transportation (111). Although this risk is undoubtedly small, it still places a vastly larger amount of people in danger. This is known because there is an “average of 20 to 25 [deaths] per year” by suicide, yet a larger number of vehicles, which have the possibility of containing more than one passenger, pass over the bridge every minute ("Traffic/Toll Data" 1). The resulting dilemma is whether one should slightly increase the risk for millions of people in order to drastically decrease the risk for an individual. By Utilitarianism, you should choose the action that decreases the risk the most for the largest number of people, but due to not being able to truly quantify the risk, the decision remains unclear. An ethical dilemma does not have a distinct solution as no action is completely without an error in morality, in order to achieve a good outcome, it is essential to dissect the issue and identify the primary stakeholders. Before a good outcome to an ethical dilemma is achieved obstacles must be overcome through argumentation and analyzing the

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