Tourists Warned About Taking Selfies Near Dangerous Spot in Australia

Diamond Bay in Sydney, Australia. (Google Street View)

Instagram models, tourists, and others have been warned by officials not to get to close to a scenic ledge.

An Instagram model popularized Diamond Bay, Australia, after she took a photo near the cliff’s edge.

But it has prompted an official, Stephen Leahy of Westpac Life Saver Rescue Helicopters, to issue a warning to a local news outlet.

“It’s really easy just to take that one step too far for the perfect picture and you’re in dire straits,” he told Australia’s Nine News.

“A wind or a stumble or anything [and] that’s the end of them because it’s sheer cliff down,” resident Rona Kahn added to Nine News about the perils of the ledge.

“We do see a lot of tourists that come past, I believe there’s a tour bus that drops off a bunch of people and it makes sense, it’s super beautiful down here,” resident Laura Dewit added to the outlet.

Other Cliff Warnings

Several months ago, U.K. police issued a warning to tourists who dangle their legs over a cliff’s edge.

Tourists try to take photos of themselves with their legs hanging over the 500-foot Beachy Head cliff along the Sussex Coast. They have to go over a fence that is intended to keep people away from the area.

“We were having a lovely day at Beachy Head yesterday until we saw this!! PLEASE don’t sit on the edge of the cliff top it is incredibly dangerous. You don’t know what you are sitting over,” wrote the National Police Air Service (NPAS) in mid-February.

They added that “people were in a fenced-off section of the cliff top.”

Officials with the NPAS were apparently flying over the cliff when they took the photo.

Selfie Deaths

The Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care said that about 259 people have died since 2011 while taking selfies.

Most of the victims are under the age of 30 and about 72 percent were male, the organization said.

It noted that men were more likely to take riskier photos.

A woman snaps a selfie as she throws a coin in the Trevi Fountain in Rome on June 21, 2017. (Tiziana FabiAFP/Getty Images)

“Selfie deaths have become an emerging problem and we performed this study to assess the epidemiology of selfie-related deaths across the globe,” said an abstract published by the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

Elaborating further, “The highest number of incidents and selfie-deaths has been reported in India followed by Russia, United States, and Pakistan,” according to the U.S. agency.

“Drowning, transport, and fall form the topmost reasons for deaths caused by selfies. We also classified reasons for deaths due to selfie as risky behavior or non-risky behavior. Risky behavior caused more deaths and incidents due to selfies than non-risky behavior. The number of deaths in females is less due to risky behavior than non-risky behavior while it is approximately three times in males,” it said.