22 September 2009

Roadside memorial consultations

| Kramer
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Chief Minister for everything, Jon “Community” Stanhope has announced the release of a discussion paper and subsequent consultation process on roadside memorials. Potential options include formalising the current free-for-all, approved park benches, plaques, and tree plantings.

As we know all too well, Canberrans can get pretty fired up about their roadside monuments…
Richardson roadside shrine removed – Good or bad thing?
Progress on the Richardson crash shrine.

I’m kinda hoping someone runs into the eucalypt out the front of my house – I could score a nice new bench! On second thoughts, maybe they should just keep their mourning at the cemetery/crematorium.

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As long as we are banning those vile bogan eyesores covered in fake flowers, teddy bears and plastic dolphins, it’s all good.

I agree that the memorials can be a distraction and cause more harm, and also agree that mourning should be kept to people’s graves / memorials in cemetaries or crematoriums. That is what they are for.

If someone dies in a hospital bed you can’t set up pies of flowers and crosses and stuff tehre, can you?

Thoroughly Smashed4:06 pm 23 Sep 09

youami: That’s already done in the ACT, albeit fairly haphazardly by the looks of it. I’m sure I’ve seen exactly what you describe on Drakeford Dr south of Isabella Dr for example.

Maybe ACT could do what South Australia does and that it is to mark alongside the road a ‘red cross’ for injuries and a ‘black cross’ for fatalities at every spot where an accident has occurred. They are non-descript, simple, cheap, and arguably effective, as it is a clear and consistent visual indicator that an accident has occurred there (without needing someone’s own arbitrary memorial with photos and flowers etc to remind drivers). And yeah I agree with Kramer in that personal mourning should be kept at the cemetery/crematorium.

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