That’s it. That’s what I remember.
The why people put them up and the how the incurable cynical view them is irrelevant for me. When I see them it reminds me that poor driving can lead to death or serious injury.
If you need a series of roadside reminders that you should be a good driver, then do us all a favor, and turn in your drivers license.
:smack:
I see some really over the top spontaneous roadside memorials, especially but not exclusively after teenagers are killed in traffic accidents. In an effort to reduce litter, prevent additional accidents, and placate sensibilities, Florida will place a memorial marker upon request. These are 15" round white signs imprinted DRIVE SAFELY IN MEMORY and followed by the name of the deceased. These remain for a year and are placed, maintained, and removed by the highway department. Seems a reasonable compromise.
I recall when I was young, on a driving trip across the country I saw little crosses that some (Western? I don’t recall) states put up at the site of fatalities. Some locations had veritable forests of crosses, which was chilling to 12 year old me. My father was a really aggressive driver, and his typical technique was already frightening. To have this visible evidence of significant mortality associated with driving scared the shit out of me!
Parenthetically, I recall no Stars of David among the crosses. I don’t remember what I thought at the time:
[ul]
[li]Us Jews are safe from traffic accidents.[/li][li]Us Jews don’t count.[/li][li]There are no Jews here.[/li][/ul]
Hijacking with a personal anecdote.
About three years after my accident, one of these memorials was placed less than five feet from the point I was hit.
That disturbed me more than all the times I had passed the spot.
There’s a roadside sign on a motorway out of Wellington for a kid who died when he was 17, and I was around the same age. I’m now 40, he’s still 17, and it gets me everytime I drive past it, and see his name and his age - how I’ve moved past it, and he never will. I think that’s really effective, makes me stop and think.
I also like the ghost bicycle tributes - used to bring driver awareness to cyclists, and also remember those who died.
I don’t know about the OP - perhaps it’s because a friend died suddenly this week, but I think I would have taken it as a reminder that life is short and I need to be glad of my blessings - even if I am stuck in traffic. Would have been sobering for me, not annoying.
There’s one on the road below us with a white bicycle (so we know what happened there). It’s a narrow, twisty road in a canyon and quite dark. I was driving up it last week in the rain and saw this blinking thing ahead. It was distracting and disorienting and I had to slow down quite a bit because I couldn’t figure out what side of the road it was on when going the speed limit of 30mph.
Someone had put blinking Christmas lights on the bicycle.
So, what, you’re advocating the death penalty for drunk drivers? I can’t say I’ve heard that one before.
Without knowing for sure, I’d say either drunk driving, inexperienced driver/wet or snowy conditions, or texting while driving.
We had a local case I got called to (I’m an EMT) with an intersection like the one you’re describing. A young girl (under 20, IIRC) was texting, and ran a stop sign. Garbage truck vs Kia Sportage. The garbage truck hit her passenger side door, and she was halfway ejected through the driver’s side window. The firefighters were picking parts of the passenger side door panel out of the upholstery of the driver’s seat,
It’s not a need. But it doesn’t hurt to have a reminder, and not just for me who is an excellent driver, that driving is serious. Watch drivers some day and look how distracted and bad many of them are. If a visual reminder helps some what’s the problem?
It’s a bit like complaining about Surgeon General’s warning on cigarettes.
It’s only a matter of time before someone insists on putting up a Muslim crescent at one of these sites. THAT will be interesting. :dubious:
There’s a pink-and-lavender cross at an intersection near my house that says “JADA” on it. When I moved here, I didn’t think anything about it until I saw “1999-2001”. It’s still maintained as if her death happened yesterday. While I feel terrible about the accidental death of a toddler, really, if you need to keep a memorial maintained this well, do it at the gravesite.
Plus, they know where the accident happened, whereas they may not know where their friend is buried, or the gravesite is a long distance away.
As for people being drunk on Christmas Day, you might be surprised. It’s also possible that a driver had a stroke or heart attack. 
I recently saw a cross by the local interstate memorializing a crash that got a lot of publicity because a car occupied by two teenage girls, one of whom died, was struck head-on by a truck that was going the wrong way down the road - and was driven by the extremely intoxicated father of one of their classmates. (This was a big school and the kids didn’t know each other.) All the kids were a few weeks away from graduation, and some of the victims’ friends, who were all the cheerleader type, were openly bullying the daughter of the drunk driver, who himself died in the crash and left her fatherless. :mad: When the school got wind of this, they declared that anyone who got caught doing this would not be allowed to participate in the commencement ceremony, and there were indeed a few kids who were banned from their own graduation. I should add that the publicity fizzled out when the tox screen came back, and both of those girls were illegally drunk themselves, and at least one of them had been using other drugs too. :smack:
nearwildheaven, I thought of the crescent and that’s why I mentioned the lack of stars. I haven’t seen those clusters of little memorial crosses since my childhood. Do any states still use them? If so, I’ll bet they’ve long since had to include additional symbols. And by now some intersections must have no room for anything else on the road shoulders 
Florida, not otherwise known as a progressive place, uses only the one style – white disk – without religious identity. And they’re not permanent, but are removed after a year.
Several years ago the Ottawa Citizen (one of the newspapers in Ottawa, Canada) had a Saturday or Sunday spread about these memorials and the stories behind some of them. One of the memorials was by a cloverleaf entrance or exit ramp. The article stated that the memorial was for someone whose car “rolled off the ramp”, as though the driver had absolutely nothing to do with the event - sorry, wrong answer. The article should have said “drove too fast on the ramp, causing his car to roll off”. It reminds me of the news stories about drivers who “lost control” of their cars. It should be mandatory for journalists to say “surrendered” or “threw away” control of their cars.
“A man was killed today when his car left the highway ramp after he let Jesus take the wheel.”
A toilet seat, perhaps?
Near colleges you get the occasional young adult that pulled a bunch of all-nighters through finals or mid-terms, and then headed home the night of the last one. Driving tired is as bad as driving drunk.
“Jesus’ blood alcohol was found to well above the legal limit. Witnesses report he had just come from communion.”
The OP has never struck me as a dirty old pervert. I assumed she noticed other drivers staring at the pretty young things, but as far as I’m aware, she doesn’t swing that way herself.
Losing a child has to be one of the worst experiences a human being can suffer. The bitching about road side memorials is either trolling or next level assholery.
Either way, if karma exists you motherfuckers have a bill to pay.
Hmmm, then it seems you still haven’t heard that one. Certainly not in the text you quoted.
In the cases described, this was beyond simple drunk driving- i.e. driving yourself home thinking you’re o.k. to drive when, in fact, you’ve consumed enough alcohol to impair your judgment, perception, and ability to react to unexpected events or circumstances. This is a terrible lapse in judgment but nevertheless an offense that the legal system will hold you accountable for should you get pulled over or cause harm to innocent life.
But the cases described went way beyond simple drunk driving. This was drunken partying in a moving vehicle. And even at that, I have in no way advocated the death penalty. All I’ve said is that their deaths are neither sad nor tragic and that the world is not measurably worse for the loss.