Newsletter
A woman from Sacramento fell 60 feet from a girder underneath the Foresthill Bridge near Auburn, California, while trying to take a selfie in a restricted area. The woman was with her friends at the time of the accident, and was subsequently airlifted to the Sutter Roseville Medical Center with serious injuries. Thankfully, though, latest reports suggest that she will likely survive the accident. According to the Placer County Sheriff’s Office, the girders on the bridge are off-limits for general citizens, and trespassers are often cited for violation of the Placer County Code and the state Penal Code. As many as 34 people were apparently fined for unauthorized entry into the restricted area on just one day in February, 2015. According to locals, the Foresthill Bridge and the surrounding area has become a popular spot for photographers and thrill-seekers of late, creating a headache for the Sheriff’s Department.
Selfies have become almost a way of life in recent times with the increasing popularity of social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and Facebook. While selfies, or self-portraits, have technically been gaining popularity since the turn of the century, the emergence of smartphones with front-facing cameras kicked off the selfie-craze in recent years. The word itself was declared the “word of the year” by the Oxford English Dictionary in November 2013, and by then, selfies had already become highly popular and extremely commonplace. In fact, the phenomenon has become so mainstream that many smartphone manufacturers are now paying extra attention to the selfie-cam on the front of their smartphones, with many even offering LED flashes to help click the perfect selfie in relative darkness.
With selfies becoming popular among youngsters and the young at heart, so have reports about tragedies and near-misses arising out of ill-conceived ideas to click selfies in the most dangerous places and with the most dangerous creatures. Over the years, several related deaths and serious injuries have been reported, with people falling off cliffs, high-rises, water tanks and bridges, while others have been ran over by vehicles, trains and even aircrafts while recklessly trying to take selfies in the middle of busy highways, rail lines and runways.