Updated: Accidentally Jumping Off a Bridge

Holy shit, this is an odd story that happened in Missouri. The Missouri is not a small river. The thought of jumping into it from a bridge on accident is bad enough, even worse that it was at night.

Rescue crews are searching the Missouri River Monday morning for a missing man.

Two men were driving on the Discovery Bridge when their car broke down around midnight. The driver got out of his car and hopped over the median, thinking it was blacktop. There was nothing there and he plunged into the river.

It's believed the other man saw what happened and jumped in after him.

The driver was able to swim to shore. Search teams have not found his friend.

Updated:

Authorities believe an optical illusion may be to blame for a Sunday night incident, where two men fell from the Discovery Bridge into the river below. The bridge is located just west of St. Louis Mills Mall on Highway 370.

Police say 21-year old Justin Winter and a friend stopped on the bridge to look at the water below. The two apparently tried to jump cross the median, but fell 60 feet into the river. Winter survived. His companion apparently got swept away. Searchers still haven't found him.

There's a 15 to 20 foot gap between the two sides of the bridge. But at night, from a certain angle, authorities say it doesn't look that way. Bridgeton Police Chief Walt Mutert says, "At night time it looks as if there might be something there. But as it turns out there's nothing but space between those two bridges."

Authorities say it has happened three times in the last month, too many times to be coincidence. So the Missouri Department of Transportation is taking action. MoDOT Spokesperson Chris Sutton says, "We're going to go in there and we're going to install solar lighting. The contract was just awarded to a contractor on Friday."

The lights will be fixed along the underside of both bridges. The hope is that they'll highlight the gap between the spans and fix the optical illusion. Sutton says, "We're certainly very concerned because it has happened more than one time, that we can go in there with a very low cost solution to add some of that lighting to hopefully prevent this from happening again."

It will cost $45-thousand to install the solar powered lights. Crews plan to start work on them later this summer.