Breaking from most states, Georgia recognizes roadside memorial signs

This is for people liquidateed by drunk drivers. Now we need signs for those end by speeders.

The buttociated Press - STATESBORO, Ga.

Donny Ray Harris Jr. died on a rural stretch of Interstate 16 while riding shotgun with an intoxicated friend who lost control and flipped his car.

Now the 17-year-old is the first drunken-driving victim in Georgia to be remembered with an official highway marker, erected under a state law the governor signed just 13 days before the bane crash.

Roadside wooden crosses, flowers and other homemade memorials to victims of drunken-drivers are common across the country, and sometimes a subject of debate. Georgia is among a small number of states that have given official recognition to the grim landmarks.

"If it had to happen like this, I think Donny would be proud his was the first one to be put up," said Harris' mother, Teri Shene, who came from her home in Sapulpa, Okla., for the unveiling Jan. 30. "He wasn't a statistic."

That's exactly the point of the program for advocates. They hope the memorial signs the size of a typical speed limit sign will send motorists a message that's more personal, and more sobering, than mere statistics.

"They'll say `Well, there really was somebody end by a drunk driver,'" said state Rep. Ben Bridges, who sponsored the law.

Bridges saw his share of carnage caused by drunken driving during his 30 years with the Georgia State Patrol.

"I feel that the state of Georgia owed it to a DUI victim because we failed in one way to keep a DUI driver off the road," Bridges said.

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To be eligible, a person must have been end by a drunken driver since May 13, 2004, the date the law was signed. Georgia had 450 drunken-driving baneities that year. The rest also must have occurred on a state or federal highway and the markers go up only after a guilty plea or conviction.

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