Love locks

I have seen these things in enough cities that it's obviously now a thing. This thing strikes me as a poorly thought out idea. The "thing" is buying a padlock to commemorate your wedding/anniversary/third date. Maybe you even get it engraved or shaped like a heart. It's symbolizes your undying love for and devotion to each other. Is a padlock a good symbol for love? Who knows? Anyway, then you lock it to a bridge. Most likely a pedestrian bridge. Why a bridge? Because a bridge links two shores like love links two lives? Is it because people like to commit suicide by jumping off them? Is it an homage to Simon & Garfunkel? I suspect the "Look at us! Aren't we cute?" aspect is important. After all, they leave it there. Do they return to check on it? The abundance of locks in Paris with English engravings makes me think not. Soon enough, other people put their locks up, too. Can't let some schmucks think they're the only romantic ones around. Inevitably, some people use massive locks that seem designed to hold ships to the dock. They must really be in love. The lock is so big!

All this love and romance is threatening to kill people. Let's do a little math, using a foot bridge I found in Helsinki.  Above is a grate in the middle that is almost completely full.  Below is a grate near the end that was just started.  Most people seem to go for attaching it to the vertical bar, so counting only those, there are 420 spaces for locks on this grate.  There were 28 grates along the bridge, which means there are spaces for 11,760 locks, assuming they can all be filled and no one just starts locking their locks onto other people's locks.  Amazon lists the weight of everything they ship, and a quick search showed lock masses varying from about 60 grams to about 180 grams.  Let's choose 100 g (0.1 kg) for simplicity of math.  Filling the bridge with locks would then add 1,176 kg (2,587 lbs) to the bridge.  This was a short pedestrian bridge.  I don't know all the engineering tolerances, but I can't imagine the designers want an extra 1.25 tons added to the sides of the bridge.  In fact, I'm certain of it, because they're starting to remove locks from bridges in Paris after a rail collapsed from the weight of these locks.

Love, summed up by a symbolic one time gesture in a place you may only visit once (Look at us! Aren't we sooooo in love?).  Then forgotten, as though no work must ever be done afterward, until it becomes so burdensome to others that your now decayed gesture must be painfully undone before it causes serious harm.  If this describes love and marriage a little too well, perhaps we should be worried.