I’d like to think I’m not all that old, but I really don’t remember these roadside memorials, or the other memorials when I was a kid. When did the proliferation (for want of a better term) take off?
I do agree with the OP that the roadside ones are distracting. Who knows–they probably cause more accidents because of the rubber-necking.
The news reports now indicate it was an 18yr old (who had only had his license for a week) with a 16yr old passenger travelling to get to NYE celebrations. Apparently they got a bit lost on the ramps to the freeway (where they crashed) and the younger fella was talking to others travelling to the same destination to get directions. Alcohol and/or drugs may or may not have been involved (the police reports didn’t specify, but didn’t rule out either) Speed was certainly a factor because the car hit a tree on a straight bit of road and burst into flames, killing both the kids on impact.
Fuck you Drunky! At the point when we passed the flower-laying, I was travelling at approximately 1kmh. It was all the other drivers who had initially slowed down to ‘perve’ at the teenage girls laying flowers that slowed everything up for everyone else, causing more chances of rear-end accidents anyway.
Oh, I agree. Being a mother and a grandmother, I get chills every time my kids hit the road for a trip.
But my point is that roadside memorials end up being a danger to OTHER drivers because of the distraction they cause. They’re not necessary, and especially at THIS time of year on one of the BUSIEST confluences of roads in metropolitan Melbourne. Holidaymakers heading down the coast for their summer jaunt, lots of young people heading to festivals for NYE…it just (another) disaster waiting to happen.
Last time I checked, I was indeed old, but far from a dirty pervert. Oh, unless you’re talking about hunky firefighters and similar, then I’m guilty as charged. 
I’m not claiming anything about your stance on drunk driving. But keep in mind that, when it comes to driving under the influence, it’s not always (or even usually) the person under the influence who is injured the worst. For example, the Carrollton, KY bus crash of 1988 killed 27 people. Because one asshole thought he was okay driving home.
I know that this type of accident isn’t typical of drunk driving accidents. But they have a sign placed there as a permanent memorial.
Interesting footnote: The date that this happened was also my older brother’s “grad night.” He and some schoolmates had decided to go to the amusement park Kings Island, which is about 90 minutes or so from here. This accident happened about (according to the version of the story I heard) 5 to 10 minutes behind him and his friends. When my mother heard about this accident, she was certain that he was involved in it. She had no way to reach him (this was before cell phones were anything more than status symbols), and was terrified until she spoke with him a few hours later.
I don’t know about your location, but it might not have been the fault of the deceased. Any place can seem safe.
My father was [del]murdered[/del] killed as he slowed down at an intersection near the end of a bridge. He was on a motorcycle. The guy in the truck behind him evidently decided it was OK to take his eyes off of the road to put in a CD, He ran into my father and propelled him into the vehicle in front of him. The [del]killer[/del] driver didn’t even get any jail time. As far as we know he wasn’t charged with anything at all, just his insurance got dinged
So a place can look safe, you can be the safest driver, but you can still get killed by someone else.
Anybody so fucking easily distracted that a cross and some wilted flowers makes him drive off the road ought not to be behind the wheel in the first fucking place.
In Japan a family set up one of those memorials at a busy intersection where one of their children had gotten killed. Some time later their other child was killed at the same location when she was putting flowers on it. :smack:
Note: I just read the full article on wiki about the crash, which states that it was on the return trip home when the crash occurred. My brother was on his way TO Cincinnati, so he would have been the opposite direction. I don’t know if my mother had that part wrong, or if it was just me misremembering the story. But I wanted to make sure that I was being as accurate as possible.
Did you even read the fucking OP dickhead?
Who drove off the road?
:dubious:
Come on Kambucta you can be honest with us 
You been out ripping down roadside signs all day?
Bloody-hell! After yesterday’s vehicular marathon, I haven’t left the house all day!
I grew up in the NE US, but I never noticed these things until I lived in Mexico in the late 1990s. My WAG: While they surely existed in parts of the US before then, perhaps the practice spread thanks to Latino immigration to many more states than before (North Carolina, Kansas, etc.)?
Here in Aus, they were certainly not a ‘thing’ before the early 1990’s. Since then they’ve grown to plague proportions, and ONLY (it seems) for stupid young dickheads who wipe themselves (and their friends) out in (mostly) single vehicle accidents.
We really don’t need to eulogise them…
I remember back in the 90s hearing Chris Isaak being interviewed on the radio. It was a long interview because he was very funny and entertaining. He told a story of hiring a driver for a day trip out into the country while touring in Mexico. They were tearing along at great speed around these winding roads and he asked the driver if they could stop to look at some of the roadside artworks. The driver informed him that each was a shrine erected to mark someones death. Izaak was horrified, “It’s not like there were one or two of these things there were dozens. And they had all died on the road. We must have been on the deadliest road on earth. We went straight back to the hotel.”
Hell, I’ve driven further for a pack of cigs (hard to keep these crazy Aussie/English metric units understood…there’s 2.5 Km in an inch, right?).
The roadside memorials sadden me to think of the fragility of ones mortality and the potential catastrophes that may befall one’s family and friends. There are more appropriate places to put memorials (eg. funeral parlors and grave-sites), but I can’t condemn family members for placing flowers at a loved one’s fatal accident site.
Does it happen to be a rhinoceros crossing?
I wasn’t responding to you, you tedious, one-note wanker. I was responding to your fellow wankers who were whining about memorials as distractions. You shouldn’t be behind the wheel of a car either, but that is because your family should keep you chained in the attic to hide their shame.
He shoulda chosen a more reliable co-pilot. 
Like I said, I’d have no problem with the things if they would eventually be taken down.
I understand about grief. But the bereaved person doesn’t have the right to keep on pushing awareness of their grief on everyone who travels that road for years and decades afterwards.
They can leave it where it is for a year or two, AFAIAC. After that, if they still want a roadside memorial, I have a great idea: let them put it in their own damn front yard.
IYHO.
My first exposure to them was on a trip out west in 1983. I remember seeing bunches of crosses along the road going east out of Glacier in Montana, looking spooky in the twilight.
I’d never seen them in the East before that, or for some time afterwards, and I’m not sure when they started appearing in the eastern U.S., other than that they were already here when we moved into the Maryland exurbs of D.C. back in 1998.
I agree with all of this. Having just lost my husband in November, I’d feel really awkward and horrible if I had some sort of display in his honor that just kept lingering and lingering around forever, falling into disrepair and forcing others to deal with the aftermath (upkeep / seeing the eyesore it’s become on a regular basis / disposing of it / working around it / being reminded of it endlessly). It just seems so wrong to continuously make your problems someone else’s when they’ve had nothing to do with it and may be actively against it. Once a respectable amount of time has elapsed, memorialize elsewhere.