I’ve seen them with varying consistency over the course of the 90s and aughts. Most of them seem to be quick reactions–a desire to immediately find way to cope with a serious loss.
I lost my sister to a wrong-way drunk driver a little over a year ago. Nobody made a roadside memorial–it would have been a little strange. Instead, those who knew her have attended memorial services, contributed to an art scholarship in her name (she was a semester away from finishing her B.F.A.), etc. If people feel the urge to react, I would rather that they do something that serves some purpose for the living: support the arts, support safe driving initiatives, etc. I don’t want to have to drive down that same stretch of highway, if I happen to be there, and have it marked like that. Besides, since she was a very particular artist, if she had her say in it, she would want something well-designed with a quality typeface.
I just drove by one a little while ago. It was originally a hand-made shrine for three high school kids who were drunk and went off the road. All were killed. A couple of months later, a family member was tending the shrine and was hit and nearly killed by a drunk driver. The city or the state put up a formal sign after that - it is shaped as a ribbon and says “Don’t drink and drive.”
I noticed one today as I was cycling with my daughter and it made me swerve slightly to the wrong side of the road. However, it did give me a visual cue to mention to my daughter later when reminding her just how important it is to cycle carefully and, if in any doubt, get off and push the bike along the pavement. I would rather they were placed at the nearest traffic light or other stopping place - this is London; that’s never going to be more than a few feet away.
As a passenger in a car, with my mother driving I’ve actually noticed her slow down at roadside memorials for pedestrians and drivers (she appears to think she’s a rally driver and I always hated being a in a car with her). Here they’re mostly on roundabouts where people would drive slowly anyway.
They are very creepy, still. I harbour a suspicion that some of them are kept up by misery-vampires people who have no connection with the actual death. This is only based on a few people I used to know who would intentionally go to a roadside memorial and place something or other even without knowing the person, but that’s what makes it creepy for me.
ETA: Some local policies seem to support the idea that roadside memorials should be placed in a safe place where they won’t distract drivers or cause pedestrians to cross where there’s no safe crossing. I’m not sure I agree with the three-month rule, but I suspect that it’s to deter misery-vampires and the utter creepiness of decaying teddy-bears; if an actual close loved one were keeping it up and it weren’t obviously dangerous, I can’t see the police stepping in to stop it.
Anyone ever read *Skinny Dip *by Carl Hiaasen? He has a character in that book who rips the crosses out of the ground and plants them in orderly rows in his back yard.
The ones that creep me out are the ones on the rear window of cars that say stuff like in loving memory of some dead nascar driver. I’ve seen a ton of them and I just know the car owner never so much as met the dead nacar driver. Yes, I live in the South. Why?
I never understood them. I think it is somewhat presumptuous to make someone’s front lawn a memorial site.
there was an incident in my city where a fatality occurred at an intersection and the same night someone CEMENTED a steel cross on the side of the road. The city came along the next day and cut it down.
In a strange way, the crosses tacked up to trees serve a purpose. They show the reality of what can happen when things go wrong.