Ghost walker appears where man was hit crossing North Greeley

Yes, I really like this but am afraid without an “RIP” under it, people will think it’s just a crosswalk marker is in the same way the little bicycle stencils are on greenways.

(FWIW I love those stencils. I noticed neighborhood kids drew capes with sidewalk chalk on the riders in my hood. Makes me smile every time).

A very large and permanent tombstone at the point of impact would send a clear and appropriate message: “someone died here and they’re not coming back”. It might create a traffic hazard though, so it would need some “road closed” signage or similar treatment.

They do it for drivers/passengers, but mostly along freeways. Given my earlier comment, I think there is a more definite sense that freeway memorials (the little white crosses seen every so often, sometimes with flowers or other mementos attached) are reminders for drivers, since drivers are pretty much the only ones using these roadways.

However, I still think we have our motivations backwards in American culture. Even though the message of freeway memorials is unmistakably targeted at drivers, and that message is pretty much unambiguously, “Drive Carefully!”, the implicit motivation for driving carefully is to protect oneself, not to avoid harming others.

When everyone is rolling around in Armadas and Enclaves, it almost makes no difference whether you are motivated to drive carefully out of concern for yourself or concern for others (or concern for your paint job)—because everyone is pretty much equal on the freeway (with the obvious exceptions of motorcycles and semis). But that doesn’t translate to neighborhood streets with mixed mode traffic.

In the neighborhood, if we continue to assume equality among all travelers, regardless of mode, and we carry the same motivation to “be safe”—to protect yourself—then auto drivers have fulfilled their duty to “be safe” merely by choosing a car instead of waking or using a bike. They have protected themselves in a metal cage, and therefore believe they are “being safe” by avoiding harm to themselves. The effect this has on attitudes about “safety” for bicyclists and pedestrians are pretty straightforward: “You are choosing to not protect yourself, Mr./Ms. Bicyclist or Pedestrian, so anything that happens to you is your own fault; don’t blame me, I was smart and drove a car!”

Until we can reverse the motivation for safe operation to an assumption that I must not harm others by my vehicle operation, the backwards attitude toward safety will persist. Also notice that the motivation for safe operation on the road cannot be that “I must not inconvenience others by my vehicle operation”, as is so often projected. If saying, “I am justified in running over you because you made me brake” doesn’t sound patently absurd, we’ve got a long, long way to go.

In Montana, they put up a small white cross sraked into the ground at the roadside of each traffic death along the state’s highway system. When you ride the Amtrak Empire Builder across Montana, you’ll be running alongside US-2 for most of the way. You’re likely to see several of them. Quite a few are at RR crossings – the result of people who died trying to beat the train across the rails. MDOT maintains the crosses.

Also, here is another, I’m sure unintentional, subtle false equivalence. To suggest that if they did this “for drivers” on surface streets, those streets would be “littered with wrecked autos“—implying the “memorials” would be to wrecked cars—you are conflating/equating property damage with loss of life.