By Anita Miller
News Editor
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There are the requisite crosses and plastic flowers at the memorial tucked into a curve on Redwood Road in southern Hays County.
There’s also a concrete bunny and other small figures at the site, where sunlight glints off aluminum cans and bits of shiny ribbon tucked into the fence.
At the memorial’s center is a hearth-like arrangement of rocks, where mourners have left personal messages. A felt tip pen invites others to do the same.
At night, solar landscape lights illuminate the scene where Redwood resident Ivan Rodriguez lost his life last year.
Rodriguez, 22, was on his Kawasaki motorcycle headed home when, minutes after midnight on Oct. 16, 2009, he veered off the roadway and hit a guardrail, fence and small tree. He had not been wearing a helmet and was pronounced dead at the scene.
As lovingly as the small remembrances at the scene are, some residents fear the memorial has evolved into a distraction.
“Like a cemetery” is how one man described the scene. “I’m afraid somebody is going to have another accident there,” he worries.
He’s not the only one. Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) spokesman John Hurt acknowledged roadside memorials can be a distraction to drivers. But, he added, the agency isn’t inclined to remove them unless they are a known hazard.
“We don’t want to appear to be heavy-handed. We try to accommodate these things when we can,” he said, calling the memorials a “public expression of private grief.”
“We realize it means something to somebody. It’s not something that we’re just going to go wholesale and remove every one we see.”
Though TxDOT has jurisdiction on all state right-of-way, Hurt said mowers generally mow around memorials unless they become a hazard.
Hurt said many people believe small roadside markers at the scene of a fatal accident serve as a warning to other motorists to exercise caution. “A lot of people think they create traffic safety. If anything they may have the opposite effect, a distraction from the roadway.”
Though most memorials have tacit TxDOT approval, Hurt said the only truly legal ones are arranged through Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and TxDOT county maintenance supervisors.
The MADD markers “are actually quite a nice memorial, white crosses with a plaque,” Hurt said. Markers arranged through the county consist of a small sign. “It stays for a period of time and then is given to the family.”
