What are Willy's suicide attempts? Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

At the
beginning of the play when Biff returns home, he and Linda have a conversation about Willy's
deteriorating mental/emotional condition. Linda tells Biff, "He's dying." But what she
really means is that he has been attempting to kill himself. Linda asks Biff to remember that
she wrote to tell him about a car accident Willy had in February. That was one of a series of
accidents that Willy had been in over the previous year. An insurance inspector investigated the
accidents and interviewed a woman who had witnessed one of them. The woman reported that Willy
seemed to deliberately smash into the railing of "that little bridge." The only reason
Willy didn't die in the accident was that the water under the bridge was shallow. The insurance
inspector believes the crashes were not accidents.

Linda next reports that
she discovered "a length of rubber pipe" in the cellar behind the fuse box. The pipe
had "a little attachment on the end of it," presumably where Willy could insert it
into or...