"Roadside Memorials"

[chet]

What's the deal with those things?

I'm from the Midwest and had never seen those things until I moved to the East to work. Are they somehow tied to a religion or something? Or is it just a social pratice? Do they mark a place where someone had an accident?

[gibsonjunkie]

Originally Posted by chet

What's the deal with those things?

I'm from the Midwest and had never seen those things until I moved to the East to work. Are they somehow tied to a religion or something? Or is it just a social pratice? Do they mark a place where someone had an accident?

Hey Chetster... yes, it usually marks where someone was killed in an accident.

[Dana]

www.roadsidememorial.org

[Joe-Bob]

They started springing up in Texas a few years ago. They can be a simple white cross or a huge gaudy display of flowers and other stuff. They are placed at the scene of fatal crashes.

[chickenpicker]

They're gaining popularity in the UK too, with some roadside locations becoming annual shrines to loved ones. Florists are particularly keen to promote the idea. Some say they help people identify accident blackspots and promote safer motoring. However, if the location is that dangerous, the most stupid thing I can think of to do, is get out of your car to place flowers right where someone may drive into you!

[Eric Karonen]

They are very common in the rural areas of Canada, however, they are very rare in the cities.

Edit: I know of at least one notorious intersection where there are two separate memorials.

[Geo]

Ditto here for a while and placed by family members.
I started seeing these in the late '70s.

I haven't seen any new ones in the Nashville area in
years. Not real sure about the outlying areas now but
there are many there from past years.
Other than work I don't drive around much otherwise
compared to back then.

[Bob Mc]

Just came back and saw two there.

[teledude66]

Drive By Truckers have a song about it ....
plastic flowers

[stevieboy]

They've been around for a long time, way longer than the 70's, I suspect they've been around almost as long as automobiles fast to enough to have fatal accidents. Traveling around the country, most commonly I see them on non freeway main roads in the country. but I also see them on freeways and even occasionally in the city. I haven't noticed a regional propensity, but I'm not really paying that much attention. The photographer Robert Frank (he who went on to do the controversial Stones movie C********r Blues) had a photo of one in hs book "The Americans" which was shot in the fifties.

[jguitarman]

I see them every day in northern California.

[teledude66]

Originally Posted by stevieboy

The photographer Robert Frank (he who went on to do the controversial Stones movie C********r Blues)

off topic , but I heard that song for the first time last night, you mean there's a movie also? I assume you know the story behind it's writing, about the last song of a contract dispute.

[stevieboy]

Originally Posted by teledude66

off topic , but I heard that song for the first time last night, you mean there's a movie also? I assume you know the story behind it's writing, about the last song of a contract dispute.

Robert Frank, an acclaimed documentary still photographer branching into film, shot a documentary movie on the Stones with that title. They knew each other as the cover of Exile on Main Street was a Robert Frank photograph of a montage of photographs on a wall he had taken at I believe a tattoo parlor. But the film had a lot of backstage footage that was a problem for the Stones as Keith was undergoing legal difficulties with being allowed in the US, so the Stones blocked its release. Frank could show bits of it at lectures, and I saw him show a reel once. There is a movement of fans trying to get the Stones to allow its release but even thirty years or so later no dice.

[Hey Joe]

They are all over the place here. There is even one in my neighborhood where a 13 year old boy was hit and killed. It does remind me to slow down and watch for children every time I see it.

[TG]

There are loads of them in Ireland.

[Bones]

I gotta say, I hate these fricken things. Eventually, no matter how well meaning the architects of these memorials are, they eventually turn into a huge pile of garbage on the side of the road. I hate litter.

On the philosphical side, why build a memorial to a person on a lonesome stretch of road, why are you memorializing where and how they died? How about doing something more constructive and doing something that memorializes how they lived?

I really don't get it, I think the practice is absurd and that the highway department should remove them as fast as they go up.

[magenta placenta]

I hate them, too. I wonder how many accidents they have caused as people look at them instead of the car breaking in front of them to look at them. I think the State's should tear them down, they have crews that pick up dead dogs and litter.

[twangee]

Randy Travis...Three wooden crosses on the right side of the highway."

[Michael Murphy]

They're all over the place around here...


-Michael
Charter Member S. Texas He-Man Emoticon Haters Local #316

[chet]

Originally Posted by Bones

I gotta say, I hate these fricken things. Eventually, no matter how well meaning the architects of these memorials are, they eventually turn into a huge pile of garbage on the side of the road. I hate litter.

On the philosphical side, why build a memorial to a person on a lonesome stretch of road, why are you memorializing where and how they died? How about doing something more constructive and doing something that memorializes how they lived?

I really don't get it, I think the practice is absurd and that the highway department should remove them as fast as they go up.

BINGO!

They're really just litter. I think that's why I never saw them when I was gowing up. The Highway Dept. was always on the ball and cleaned those things up like any other litter.

The memorial should be at the grave- that's what the graves are for. JMHO

[shakedancer]

I go down the Highway everyday and pass Crosses and flowers etc. I don't like it and feel it should be banned. Not only that, but some innocent driver may be killed swerving to avoid one of these people who are putting these things there. On the same hand I think I understand the feelings of those people. But it's morbid and not appropriate to make the rest of us put up with that :(

[Telemaniac]

I don't like the idea of flowers at the accident, a bit macabre to me. A young girl was killed a few hundred yards from my house a couple of years back - apparently complete accident, 2 in the morning, driver sober - and every day there's bedraggled flowers in plastic wrappings lying there, it is a mess.

Saw a great idea to warn of blackspots though, on the road from Bordeaux to Lacanau in France. It's notorious for accidents so everywhere there has been one they put a matt black silhouette of a man for each fatal crash. Some places you get a row of four or five together. Makes you think.

[Twin Reiver]

A young girl was killed a few hundred yards from my house a couple of years back - apparently complete accident, 2 in the morning, driver sober - and every day there's bedraggled flowers in plastic wrappings lying there, it is a mess.

Wow! Too bad those family members who have had a loved one violently and randomly ripped from their lives aren't a little more considerate, huh? Rotten litterbugs!

You know what I do when I see a roadside memorial? I usually slow down and drive more carefully, because it has just reminded me of how dangerous driving can be. So who knows? Maybe they save lives.

[fullerplast]

Originally Posted by Twin Reiver

You know what I do when I see a roadside memorial? I usually slow down and drive more carefully, because it has just reminded me of how dangerous driving can be. So who knows? Maybe they save lives.

Yeah, I agree. I don't know if I want to judge them good or bad, but they remind how fragile life is every time I pass one. The people that died there didn't expect to have their lives cut short that day. They were probably just like you or me.

Carpe Diem.

[Rick S]

The events of 9/11/01 claimed the lives of almost 3000 and pretty much made the world stand still. In the same year, over 42,000 US citizens lost their lives on the roads and tens of thousands more sustained disabling injury of which they will never fully recover.

It's a topic that the majority don't want to hear or talk about. If you get into it, it's quite a study of human behavior as to why. It's so politically unpopular that although the topics of insurance and health care crisis are in the forefront, the main cause is never stated.

The only exception has been MADD and the movement against drunk driving. This has been a huge success in reducing DUI related fatalities. This brought children as the victim to the forefront and defined an enemy to be pursued. Unfortunately, the road rage/aggressive driving and cell phone related fatalities have more than made up for it and the number one cause of death in children remains.

The sickening reality is that the odds are so bad that in our lifetime every one of us will likely lose someone very close to us. I hate to see the roadside memorials too, but having suffered the loss myself, I certainly understand.