It seems that an organisation calling itself "Society of Chief Officers of Transportation in Scotland (Scots) - geddit? - has put out a report suggesting that flowers at the roadside at scenes where accidents have occurred have a distracting effect on other drivers and, by implication, may cause more accidents. The policy recommends that floral tributes be removed after 30 days and that permanent memorials be discouraged. It seems that Aberdeenshire Council is considering adopting this policy.
I have no strong views about this one way or the other, except to say that I find some of the memorials I have seen around Scotland to be somewhat tasteless, although I don't doubt the sincerity of the people who placed them. The other thing that strikes me is that I don't recall these very much from my childhood as they seem to be a phenomenon of more recent years. I first recall seeing these in large number at the sides of mountain roads in both Turkey and Greece - I wonder if the numbers of British people visiting these and other countries in the last 30 or so years, where this practice is longer-standing, has resulted in some "cross-cultural fertilisation"?
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