Woman falls off bridge while taking selfie – Police

Commentary: A woman allegedly gets onto a closed walkway on California’s tallest bridge just to take a selfie. It’s not a good idea.

Selfies just aren’t enough anymore.

They have to be exciting selfies, unique selfies, extreme selfies.

So it is that police say a woman was on the Foresthill Bridge — at 730 feet, California’s tallest — last Tuesday and entered a closed walkway for the very purpose of taking a more like-worthy selfie.

Then she fell 60 feet.

In a Facebook post, the Placer County Sheriff’s Office said the woman and a group of her friends “were walking on the girders underneath the Foresthill Bridge in violation of Placer County Code 12.04.190 and Penal Code 602.”

The sheriff’s office said the unidentified woman landed on a trail, was airlifted to a hospital and is expected to survive.

On Facebook, the office explained, “The walkways under the Foresthill Bridge are closed for the protection of our residents and our community.”

The woman won’t be charged, the sheriff’s office told me, and there is currently no update on her condition.

One of the woman’s friends told CBS News, “The bolts that are holding the beams together…she, like stepped on them kinda weirdly and she just lost her balance and fell backwards.”

Some might suggest that it was kinda weird that someone might ignore the warning signs explaining that the walkway was closed.

There have been too many cases of people taking selfies and risking their lives. In Russia, authorities even issued a handbook in an attempt to deter people from extreme — or just thoughtless — selfie-taking. The list of selfie-taking fatalities grows by the year, but few people seem deterred from trying to impress their friends.

Though the woman in this case won’t be charged, that doesn’t mean anyone else trying to get on the walkway can do so.

In a subsequent Facebook post, the sheriff’s office said: “You will be cited and or arrested if found in any closed location. Worse yet, you can lose your life and none of that is worth a selfie!”

C|Net

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