Roadside Memorials: How long?

[monster]

Fatal car crashes spawn roadside memorials.

you know, the crosses the teddy bears, the fake flowers....

How long should they last?

Should the bereaved have a right to place them on private property?

[Clodfobble]

There's one in town that's artfully painted on a cement highway strut, and it's been there for about 40 years at this point. Someone keeps the paint fresh every few years, and the city's never tried to cover it.

[monster]

is it distracting to drivers?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Mylar balloons, ribbons, stuffed animals and paper goods, look like shit pretty quickly. Some of them look like someone dumped their trash there, which is hardly respectful to the deceased.

[monster]

I agree. There's one near us -presumably for a child- which had been around for a couple of years now and currently is a stack of mouldy stuffed animals duct-taped to an electrical pole. Would it really be inappropriate to remove it? Someone must think so, because new animals get added from time to time

[xoxoxoBruce]

If it's not on your property it would not only be inappropriate, but possibly illegal.

[gvidas]

South Dakota has this really intense policy of putting a sign up for every driving death, or maybe every drunk driving death. I never got a clear sense of it, and couldn't find anything googling.

Basically, every awful turn or anywhere else that there was a traffic fatality, there was a sign which said something like "THINK" on one side, and "DON'T DIE" on the other, with some finer print about the dangers of drunk / reckless driving.

There would be some curves with a half dozen of these signs in a tight row. Worse around the reservations south of the Badlands, or on smaller roads in the rural south-central region.

The clearest explanation I got from a local while passing through the summer before this past one was that they had a really amazingly high rate of driving fatalities, due to a high statewide speed limit (75?) and a low age for licenses (15?).

I found it to be a fairly sobering reminder that someone else had fucked their shit up on that same road.

The crosses and flowers tend to effect me less. Like if there's a personalized commemoration it's this statement to some effect that the person who died, who is being memorialized, was not responsible for it.


edit: here it is, then: from a blog post relevant to the thread as a whole, via roadsideamerica.com:

Part 3: South Dakota’s Highway Fatality Markers
We continue to be fascinated by the official and unofficial markers of highway deaths. The unofficial tributes, called descansos, were rarely observed in South Dakota. But there were plenty of official signs erected by the SD Dept. of Transportation, part of a program started in 1979. Diamond in shape, one side says “Think,” and the other side says “Why Die?” Both sides have a red “X” painted on them (definitely not a Christian cross), with “X marks the spot” in small type.

Multiple fatalities are depicted as individual signs in a line spaced ten feet apart -- we assume this was to avoid the visual horror of signs sprouting from one spot like some abstract fatality flower.

The signs stay until they fall apart or are displaced by construction, and are not replaced unless the deceased family makes a special request.

[ZenGum]

In (South) Australia, we have the same set up for the same purpose. A small black post with a red cross (Christian shape) marks a fatality, and a white post with a red cross (I think) marks a serious injury.

The idea is, I guess, to remind drivers about the imminence and immanence of death, and alert them to particularly dodgy corners. I've no idea if it actually works, or if it is just distracting.

[Cloud]

I've never thought about the issues of degenerating memorials or private property--mostly because they're usually on the side of a public road and I don't get close enough to notice if they're mouldy or something.

I'm kinda surprised to hear of such memorials in other places--I always thought it was a Mexican/hispanic-american thing. We get a lot of them here, with crosses and flowers--sometimes pictures or paintings of La Virgen.

[TheMercenary]

I think many states have laws concerning what they can be made of, i.e. wood or other substances that can degrade and not be a hazzard, but not some thing like concrete. As long as someone continues to keep them up I don't think most people care if they are there or not.

I agree with Cloud, and I have heard from other people that it is a common thing among Hispanic peoples. The exact spot where they died becomes sacred.

[monster]

They seem to be on the increase here.

They're pretty common in some European countries, notably Greece.

[dmg1969]

I know about probably a half dozen in my daily travels. I have no problem with them. And, yes, I think that a property owner should be consulted before a memorial is placed. That's why it's called private property.

[Glinda]

There's one not too far from my place that's been there at least five years. It always squicks me out - whomever keeps putting different baseball caps on the top of the cross.

Ew.

[Madman]

No issues here with them. They're all over Missouri. Some are rather extensive as far as the quality goes. I've seen a few along busy streets between the sidewalk and curb.

I'd probably put one up if I lost a loved one in a traffic accident.

[sweetwater]

I dislike the messy or extravagant displays, and find them more annoying than sobering. If they mean something to someone then I say, "go ahead" - at least they aren't billboards. I have heard that mowing crews have issues with the markers because the stuff has to be mowed around and some of the memorial's junk might get hung up or kicked out of the blades. Paint and consistent posts sounds like a good solution.