Roadside memorial

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Flowers marking the site of a fatal crash

Roadside memorials are sometimes erected at the site of a fatal road crash.

The memorials, which often consist at first of just a few flowers or wreaths, are sometimes followed by a more permanent marker such as a cross or a plaque. These are occasionally made more personal, with names and mementos.

There have been roadside memorials for more than a thousand years. Eleanor crosses in England, for example, were erected in 1290 along the route of the Queen's funeral procession, though these, of course, were not intended to mark a death place.

A more permanent marker

The first automobile fatality may have been Mary Ward's accident with a steam car in 1869. Prior to this, roadside memorials would have been placed for deaths unrelated to motor vehicles.

In the 1940s and '50s the Arizona State Highway Patrol began using white crosses to mark the site of fatal car accidents. This practice was continued by families of road-crash victims after it had been abandoned by the police.

The number of memorials erected in Australia since 1990 has increased considerably. In 2003 it was estimated that one in five road deaths were memorialised at the site of the crash.

It has been suggested that the urge to erect roadside memorials is related to a growing reluctance to seek spiritual solace in organised religion, and it is interesting to note that although religious symbols are often still used at roadside memorials, these seem merely to mark the place of a violent death and are probably not intended to carry any particular religious significance. It may be that roadside memorials mean more to families than do cemeteries. At the very least, there is an immediate reminder of the person in the site of his death. These 'sacred places' however, unlike cemeteries, usually serve only as a place for immediate grieving and tend not to be maintained.

The phenomenon of roadside memorials may perhaps be associated with another growing trend: public outpouring of grief for celebrities. The death of Diana, Princess of Wales, for example, precipitated an avalanche of flowers and wreaths at the Paris site of her death and at Kensington Place. While car-crash victims are rarely so well-known, something of the same sort of impulse to make a public display of emotion at the site of a tragedy may be partly responsible for the growing popularity of roadside memorials.

Another aspect of these memorials is that they serve as a warning to other road users, both as a general reminder of the dangers of driving, and to mark a place where a fatal accident took place.

[edit] Controversy

In the United Kingdom, the practice of erecting roadside memorials has recently sparked a media debate about the danger these may pose to other road users and to people erecting the memorials in unsafe places. This debate has been sparked by accounts of dangerous actions, such as an adult dangerously crossing a main road with a young child to place a tribute.

Some jurisdictions already enforce local regulations, and police officials and local councillors have suggested that uniform rules be introduced across the country. For example, according to the BBC, in Merthyr Tydfil, memorials will only be allowed where it is deemed safe and appropriate, and they will be removed after three months. [1]

In the United States, the legal situation varies from state to state. In California, residents must pay a state fee of $1,000. The states of Colorado, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin ban such memorials. Other states impose specific requirements.[2](see state by state requirements)