WIBU?- Roadside shrines

[Arnoldthecat]

This is more of a ..would i be unreasonable....to not want a roadside shrine directly outside my house/garden gate/in close proximity..?

I haven’t read the whole thread, so apologies if this has already been mentioned.

At the end of last year my friend was killed in a hit and run. The police explained to his wife that roadside tributes were not encouraged as they caused additional danger to other road users.

This was no issue with this as he hated cut flowers.

The day after she visited the scene someone had left a bunch of flowers in the place he was killed in cellophane. Whoever left them literally just left them and they went super manky within the plastic. Someone kindly tidied it up a few weeks later. His wife had to pass it every time she went in her car.

People do deal with grief in different ways. If it safe and not causing a disturbance or on private land with permission then the question is what is the harm? In my friends case it was just very weird that someone would leave something so totally alien to the person killed!

I think they are awful. I think they should be removed after a short while.

If it's a RTA then there will be a body which will be either cremated or buried so there can be another more fitting place to morn.

The family of that burglar (or indeed anyone using an apparent shrine to intimate) are of course wrong and should have been dealt with using harassment laws.

So you're saying it's depends on public opinion if their friends/family can openly grieve?? Who decides, if they allowed for one, why not for all? Exactly why none of them should be allowed.

I pass one every time I visit my Dad. It's a monstrosity. Tones of coloured, dirty things. There's got to be something less ugly?

So you're saying it's depends on public opinion if their friends/family can openly grieve?? Who decides, if they allowed for one, why not for all? Exactly why none of them should be allowed

The award for spectacularly missing the point goes to you howwill

That's neither what I said nor what I meant.

It wasn't a shrine, it was a means to intimidate, threaten and frighten the occupants of the house and the rest of the street.

Frankly not my fault if you can't understand that.

In general, roadside ones highlight the dangers on our roads. Anything that gets drivers to slow down and/or drive more safely is a good thing

No - they slow down and take their eyes of the road to look - NOT a good thing at all.

I find them extremely distracting and quite dangerous.

Sorry if this has already been mentioned, but there was an episode of Moving On (BBC) called The Shrine, it was a really interesting way to see both sides

@10IAR who decides that was not genuine grief and wanting to publicly grieve as others do..........you, me, police? Why can't families of "rouges" when they die grieve?

I didn't miss the point one single bit!

I'd feel far more upset that someone had died near my home. Talk about class markers, not being the kind of people you'd want to mess with and how they're vulgar and tacky is crass in the extreme when you consider that the people in question have just had their lives ripped apart

There’s a fairly big shrine down the road from me.

A speeding drunk driver crashed into someone’s house and died 5 years ago. He was only 19

Pretty quickly flowers, balloons, bottles of beer, teddy bears, etc appeared, all propped up against the side of the house and all over the front garden.

The home owner left them for a while before they were cleared away - mainly because quite a bit of damage had been done to the house and it needed repairing

There was a huge backlash against the house owners across Facebook and the local press from the victim’s family and friends.

The home owners were happy with the odd bunch of flowers or a plant, but rightly didn’t want the side of their house and front garden covered with all this stuff forever more

I don’t like it and I really feel for the home owners as this comes up every year at the time of the accident, at Christmas and the driver’s birthday

when you consider that the people in question have just had their lives ripped apart

Hardly. I would suggest that a significant proportion of people who indulge in these public displays are not remotely affected but rather enjoying the competitive grieving and virtue signalling.

People keep politely saying that these cellotaphs are a distraction for drivers. If I was driving by I wouldn't notice them any more than I notice any other litter by the side of the road.

If I lived there though, I'd notice and be enraged by them every day because they look like shit.

Where my mum lives someone died in a gang fight. Wrapped flowers are always placed at the scene, even now years later. The thing is it was outside a shop so the shopkeeper has to carefully manoeuvre all the plastic tat to one side so his staff and customers can get in and out.
I agree about planting a bush or tree or having a bench made. That's much better than these shrines covered in plastic.

I wonder if some of you would like to explain your arguments to the family and friends of Jodie Chesney. No I thought not.

Does Jodie Chesney's family want a permanent shrine to her memory at the place of her murder Derxa? Have you asked them? If not, it seems distasteful of you to invoke her name on this thread.

She died in a place that's more local to me than to you. There are flowers, as you would imagine. I also imagine they will be cleared away.

Maybe we could solve the issue by offering the deceased's family the chance to have a memorial slab let into the pavement as in the stephen lawrence murder? Why was this allowed?

Why would it not be Arnoldthecat? The memorial to Stephen Lawrence, which keeps being defaced, is a discreet slab in the pavement. There is no reason to object to it than a blue plaque to Winston Churchill or Jimi Hendrix or the small headstones up by Michael Winner to fallen police officers. It's not litter. It reminds us of his passing and the reason why it happened. The only reason I can see for its continued defacement is that people are fucking arseholes.

Whilst I understand the need for temporary localised shrines following a painful public bereavement, one of the major public parks in my city is rapidly becoming an unofficial "cemetery". It's increasingly difficult to find space on any bench in the park which hasn't already been commandeered by someone securing a large bunch of flowers to "their favourite bench" in memory of a loved one. People seem to have forgotten about the age old custom of buying a new bench for the park and having a simple name plate attached to it as a more suitable permanent memorial.

I would suck it up and regularly appreciate the free flowers! In fact I thought that was what your WIBU was going to be about!

Unless you have lost a dear one in an RTA, I don't believe you have the right to comment and you definitely should not remove it.

Difficult if it's something recent but don't they mostly just fade away after a few weeks or months - the temporary ones I mean? If it's something more permanent - made of concrete - you've got a proper shrine like Italy!

I think it's possible to have shrines and keep them discreet. A small cross or even a single bunch of flowers is fine.

I generally feel very sympathetic to grieving families who make the roadside shrine -- something terribly tragic and important to them happened there and they want to mark it in some way.
It's not something I would ever do or want done for me.
But there is a spot close to me where a few years ago a young single mother died when her car was hit head-on by an oncoming vehicle which was overtaking another car.
I read in the local paper that her two young children set up a shrine (mostly bouquets) and a wooden cross on the grass verge which has now been replaced by a planted rose bush. I'd feel churlish if I objected to that.

SalliSunbeem - I think it started with the passing of Princess Diana.

Unless you have lost a dear one in an RTA, I don't believe you have the right to comment and you definitely should not remove it. Yes that's what I feel.