I'll try doing comics again.
Roadside memorials
Posted July 21st, 2012 at 09:34 PM by old hat
Near where my sister lives, there is a comple of apartment buildings. They front on to a busy North/South street. If you go North from the apartments you come to a well lit, controlled intersection with a small shopping center on the far side of it. From where the apartments are up to that intersection, the street is quite dark.
For years, I have been seeing little roadside memorials on that street a hundred feet or so South if the intersection. One will be there for a while. It will be taken down only to be soon replaced by another one. I don't know about other areas but around the Central Valley flowers by the side of the road are a memorial for someone who was hit by a vehicle and killed in the street there. I have would guess that there are 4-6 different ones at that spot every year that I see. There may well be several more that I miss. Every one signifies a life lost there. This is on a stretch of sidewalk that is 20 or so feet long.
What makes it all even more tragic is how completely unneccessary it all is. If people just stayed on that side of the street until they got to the intersection and crossed there, most of these people would still be alive. Instead, they cross short of the intersection where it is dark and go the rest of the way on the other side of the street. There is nothing on the other side of the street but a chain link fence with an empty field on the other side of it. There is no reason at all to cross short of the intersection. It doesn't even shorten the trip. It serves no purpose at all except to get several people a year run over and killed.
Why do people keep doing this when they can see the little memorials to other people who have been killed there? Once I saw three up at the same time. Someone crossed there right n front of two little shrines to others who were already killed there. That's like coming to a field, seeing two dead bodies out there with their legs blown off and then walking out in to it anyway even though it isn't even a shortcut. What makes this seemingly neverending string of senseless tragedies worse is that they often put little pictures of the person on the shrine and most of the ones I have looked at were children and teenagers.
For years, I have been seeing little roadside memorials on that street a hundred feet or so South if the intersection. One will be there for a while. It will be taken down only to be soon replaced by another one. I don't know about other areas but around the Central Valley flowers by the side of the road are a memorial for someone who was hit by a vehicle and killed in the street there. I have would guess that there are 4-6 different ones at that spot every year that I see. There may well be several more that I miss. Every one signifies a life lost there. This is on a stretch of sidewalk that is 20 or so feet long.
What makes it all even more tragic is how completely unneccessary it all is. If people just stayed on that side of the street until they got to the intersection and crossed there, most of these people would still be alive. Instead, they cross short of the intersection where it is dark and go the rest of the way on the other side of the street. There is nothing on the other side of the street but a chain link fence with an empty field on the other side of it. There is no reason at all to cross short of the intersection. It doesn't even shorten the trip. It serves no purpose at all except to get several people a year run over and killed.
Why do people keep doing this when they can see the little memorials to other people who have been killed there? Once I saw three up at the same time. Someone crossed there right n front of two little shrines to others who were already killed there. That's like coming to a field, seeing two dead bodies out there with their legs blown off and then walking out in to it anyway even though it isn't even a shortcut. What makes this seemingly neverending string of senseless tragedies worse is that they often put little pictures of the person on the shrine and most of the ones I have looked at were children and teenagers.
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