White Crosses and Roadside Memorials

When I was a child in the South I used to see a fair number of white crosses and other memorials on the side of roads, usually where someone had died in a car accident. Many of them would have "Jesus Saves", which belied the fact that he may have missed the one that died there by a moment or so, others would have the dire warning "Get Right With God" which seemed entirely more appropriate.

Today I'm coming home on Maryland Rt 100, a fairly busy and major artery in my area and was surprised to notice something that was a bit disturbing or maybe only a bit curious, depending on how one chooses to think of it.

I had noticed along this road several impromptu memorials similar to those of my younger years down South, they had been there a few weeks at least. I never could quite read the words as I passed by but did reflect that someone's loved one probably died at that spot. These memorials were more temporary than the wooden crosses normally seen in the South, I think the crosses were styrofoam, probably of a funery nature.

Anyway, today was different. I had gone out a different way and decided on the way back to use Rt 100 and as I was driving I noticed the wide grass median and the roadsides had been mowed. As I passed by one place where I remembered a memorial, I noticed it had been run over by the tractors and chopped all to hell and smithereens, styro, paper, and whatever else composed it all over that area.

My question is this;

Should the road crew have taken care in removing the memorial, or run over it as they did, or moved it for the mowing and then set it back. It seems to me they took the absolute worst approach to it, since I'm sure they could have seen it before mowing over it. It seems disrespectful to have destroyed it the way they did. Putting it into a dump truck and leaving nothing of it behind would have been preferable to leaving it in bits all over the middle grassy area.

I wonder how many others noticed that today on the way back from work and how they felt seeing it all chopped up and laying there? How will whoever put it up there feel? Should anyone really care?

Do these memorial even belong on the roadside? Do they serve the purpose of a warning or is someone we don't know trying to make us share in some small part in what might better be their private grief? Do they put these memorials there to make the person seem "not forgotten" as if that helps them to keep "living" in some manner? What is the motivation?

I doubt if I lost a family member in a road accident that I would ever want a roadside memorial at that spot. Why do people put these things up?

The other thing I began to wonder is if there was some group responsible in the past down South for putting up along roadways all those white crosses that looked the same? Anyone know?