We’ve had a couple of years with the suicide prevention barrier along the Bloor viaduct. So who was right? The city, which said it would cut overall suicides, or the critics, who said suicidal people would just go somewhere else?—Gary Krupa, Midtown

You’re not the only one who’s curious: the Toronto coroner has been contacted by municipalities as far away as San Francisco, which is considering a similar barrier for the Golden Gate Bridge. But the short and frustrating answer is, we still don’t know. Toronto’s suicide rates have been steady over the past half decade, averaging 243 per year, but there’s always a degree of fluctuation from one year to the next. The problem is that the number of deaths that resulted from jumps off the viaduct before the so-called luminous veil was installed is smaller than that annual variation. It’s likely a trend will emerge eventually, but it will take a few more years. In the meantime, the only thing we can say with certainty is that our barrier prevents suicides at its location: since its installation in 2003, there hasn’t been a single jumper.

• Categories: Miscellaneous