Roadside memorials are ugly, dumb, and should be enforced as littering.
Im not a complete heartless b4stard, but one thing Im really passionate about is the amount of garbage that plagues our environment. Plastic and paper floating around everywhere on a windy day or finding a wad of balloons (from some dumb release ceremony) that made its way into a beautiful remote hiking trail in a forest is enough make one pause and think that maybe Ted Kaczynski was on to something.
So when I see these dumb wads of garbage sloppily zip tied to a sign or some makeshift shrine of balloons or 5 year old teddy bears with poly-fill spilling out onto the highway, it makes me scream. This is littering. If I started zip tying random garbage to every sign I pass, I would be ticketed for vandalism and littering. Why does this garbage get a pass. These memorials are rarely maintained, nobody throws that stuff away. It's just left to rot in the elements but since 80% of it is plastic garbage, it usually just ends up clogging water ways and ditches up.
tl:dr roadside memorials are dumb and should be treated and enforced as vandalism and littering.