I find them annoying and distracting.  People who construct them should be cited for littering.  I'm old enough to remember when grieving (and ones religious beliefs) were private matters.  What's next?  Are people going to start renting ad space on roadside billboards announcing that this is the spot that their loved one died? 

A friend of mine drowned off the coast of Florida earlier this year.  Maybe I should get him a buoy.  That's how you spell it, right?

The hospitals would have 10's of thousands of markers on the walls, in the hallways, and in the operating rooms.

If they're really that much of a distraction, then you should probably surrender your driver's license. 

I have never liked them, so freaking morbid, celebrate the life not the death, and trust me if there is a soul I highly doubt the person is gonna hang around where they died, some of them get so damn elabrate, with statues of saints and crap that really isn't needed at all. spend the money on charity or something far better.

I find almost every type of death ritual we participate in to be frivolous and foolish on some level. This is merely one of millions.

I have been seeing those up in Canada as well, shit hate those ones as well, really you want to honor their memory, DO something in their honor or memory, volunteer your time, give to charity do something other than tell me when they died, like I give a shit, people die all the freaking time.

I'm sorry Josh, my post wasn't directed toward you, but rather toward the general sentiment expressed in the first few posts that roadside memorials are distracting and potentially deadly.  Sorry for the confusion. 

But yeah, people put them up around here quite a bit.  In a sense I find them to be gaudy, tacky, and in poor taste, but definitely not distracting.  But in another sense I understand them and am even fascinated by them. 

I hail from a pretty morbid part of the country, so I've grown up with the concept of hyper-memorialization.  A common "trope" around here (for lack of a better term--sorry, I know it sounds insensitive) is the young person, usually a male, full of life and so much potential, tragically snuffed from life via a horrific car accident.  Now this phenomenon is widespread for a few reasons, but the main reason, in my view, is geographical--my hometown is located in an extremely remote mountainous region, so the roads are at best difficult to navigate.  Get a wild-and-wolly 16-year old out on these concrete serpentines, and under the right conditions, it's going to be deadly. 

Alcohol and/or drugs are usually involved too.  An old friend of mine just died in a car accident last year--with a nostrilful of cocaine at ~120 per.  Hit a floodwall head on.  Some have even suggested that it was suicide, given that he hit the wall so squarely. 

But yeah, the Generation Xer in me makes me rolls my eyes at these idiotic memorials.  I mean, they usually end up looking like something from Mardi Gras or Festivale.  These crosses decorated with flowers, garland, tassles, and all sorts of bull shit.  There are four out on the interstate that remind me of Elvis with outstretched arms (tassles hanging down and all). 

But I also get it.  Like I said before, I come from a very remote and impoverished region of the country, and we're not the most educated lot either.  I mean, some of us are (the fortunate ones), but for the most part people just aren't.  An alarming percentage of people don't even come close to finishing high school.  So as a result, folks around here deal with everything in a far more primitive way than in most other regions.  But I don't think this makes us inherently stupid or worthless--it just means that we have a different way of dealing with joy and grief. 

It's definitely not across the board, though.  My uncle on my mother's side died in childhood (aged 5) back in the 1950s.  I only remember seeing one photo of him, and it was stored away in a closet.  And the thing is, he didn't even have a tomb stone until last year.  For 50 years, his grave was marked by a medium sized rock.  My maternal grandfather, growing ever closer to his own death, wanted to remember his old boy mainly because he didn't want to be forgotten. 

But on the other hand, my aunt on my father's side died as a teenager (aged 17) back in the early 1970s.  it was a classic example like I mentioned before--she was at a church picnic one sunday at the local football field, and a car full of young, drunk boys veered off the road and into the crowd.  Her torso was ran over, my uncle's leg was ran over, and my uncle's friend's neck was ran over.  So 2/3 of my grandparents' immediate family was mowed down before their very eyes in a matter of a few seconds.  My uncle and his friend lived (though with horrific injuries), but my aunt died of shock in the hospital later that day. 

The driver spent 90 days in jail, and has been a free man for 35 years--or arguably for all but 90 days of his 50+ year life. 

They immediately bought her a huge tomb stone and had her buried beside this massive statue of Jesus.  Every year on the Sunday closest to her death, they go out to the cemetery and decorate her grave.  The only photograph left of her is my grandmother's prized possession.  4 years after the accident, our town suffered massive flooding, and because that photo was the only one hanging high on the wall, the hundreds of photos of her were destroyed.  This caused my grandmother to go mad, further fueling her need to memorialize her daughter's death.  She hasn't driven a car since the accident, and has barely left her house since the flood (though with medication she's doing much better these days). 

All that to say:  yes, they're gaudy and in poor taste, but I get it, and I certainly don't find them distracting. 

I've removed a dozen or so...