Should funeral processions be banned?

[dgolub]

Here's a listing of how different states handle it: https://www.cga.ct.gov/2004/rpt/2004-R-0303.htm

I notice that the three states of the NYC metro area, NY/NJ/CT, all provide no exception to stopping for red lights.  I'd guess that this is because the area is so densely populated and the safety issues are greater than in more rural areas.  My mother's family is buried in New Jersey, my father's family is buried in New York, and we were perfectly fine without going through any red lights at my relatives' funerals.

[vdeane]

Both times I've been in a funeral procession, we didn't stop for any red lights.  That said, the funeral home got police escort.  I didn't even know headlights was a way to identify them; it seems that in the Rochester, NY area, at least, the flashers is the main feature.  I don't recall even having flags.

[Pete from Boston]

Both times I've been in a funeral procession, we didn't stop for any red lights.  That said, the funeral home got police escort.  I didn't even know headlights was a way to identify them; it seems that in the Rochester, NY area, at least, the flashers is the main feature.  I don't recall even having flags.

It was primarily headlights in the time when daytime headlight use was uncommon, about twenty years ago and before.

[Scott5114]

Seems to me it would make much more sense for everyone to leave the church and head to the cemetery in the form of "here's the address, everyone meet there" rather than everyone following each other in a slow-moving caravan and creating a moving roadblock. This is, after all, typically how everyone gets from ceremony to reception at a wedding, a two-part two-location event of similar magnitude involving a similar group of people.

One big difference with everyone going to the wedding reception vs. a funeral procession to the cemetery is (and I've attended both several times over the years so I know from personal experience) there is a lot more lag-time for a wedding reception.  Guests tend to arrive at a more leisurely fashion while the wedding party themselves doesn't arrive until later because they are involved in various photo shoots.  I remember one reception where there was at least an hour wait from the time the guests arrived and when the wedding party finally entered.

In contrast, since the final portion of the funeral at the cemetery doesn't start until everyone (in the procession) arrives; keeping everyone together (again, one must remember that many in attendance may not be familiar with the area and/or are not roadgeeks/enthusiasts) via a proceesion reduces the overall lag-time.

I asked this question (in general) earlier in this thread, but this time I will ask you personally; have you yourself been in a funeral procession (either as a driver or cognizant passenger) for the death of a family member or friend?  If your answer to that question is, No; then I think your opinions/attitude on this subject might change once you've participated in such.

Maybe one option for funeral homes/parlors can offer to alleviate procession-related issues would be to have a fleet of either vans or busses to transport friends & relatives en lieu of using their own individual vehicles.  One downside for such, would be that those in attendance would be forced to head back to the funeral home or house of worship to pick up their own vehicles when the cemetery ceremony has concluded rather than drive straight from the cemetery to home or wherever the post-funeral gathering is (if any).  The latter is, obviously, not part of funeral procession ceremonies.

Then design the funeral ceremony to accommodate the travel time. We don't allow "people may be unfamiliar with the area/in a compromised emotional state" to let people weasel out of traffic laws under any other circumstance, why should it suddenly be a concern when some guy kicked the bucket?

When my great-grandmother died I was around ten or eleven, and part of the funeral procession for her, which used I-635 and I-70 in Kansas City, KS. I was uncomfortable with the whole thing then; our escort was not a police officer but some guy from the funeral home, and even then I felt like there was just too much that could go wrong from someone misunderstanding our actions.

I don't think the practice of having a funeral procession should be banned, just that it shouldn't be exempt from traffic laws designed to keep everyone safe.

[J N Winkler]

I think in most parts of the country, it is now less practical to have a funeral procession than it was several decades ago, simply as a result of multiple factors such as increased traffic volumes, increased speed limits, and changed expectations for behavior in traffic.

My grandmother and her mother both spent their last years in Wichita but are buried near their ancestors in a small cemetery in Gypsum, Kansas, about 90 miles away.  The most convenient route to the town is via I-135 and K-4, although there is a paved county road that is more direct (Ridge Road in Wichita is actually paved all the way from northern Sumner County to the north city limits of Gypsum, across Sedgwick, Harvey, McPherson, and parts of Sumner and Saline Counties).

My great-grandmother died on October 31, 1982.  Her funeral procession had headlights on, a police escort, and flags on the hearse.  It moved slowly on city streets and K-4 but at normal speeds on I-135, which then had a 55 limit.  To the extent that other traffic was noticeably inconvenienced, it was in urban Wichita only.

My grandmother died almost thirty years later, on August 15, 2011.  She did not have a funeral procession at all.  Instead, a viewing for the family and a funeral service were held at the funeral home's chapel in west Wichita, and those attending the burial were instructed to be at the cemetery three hours later, leaving enough time for lunch in town followed by a drive north on I-135, which by then had a 75 limit.

Kansas does not have any laws governing funeral processions (per an online rundown of state laws governing them).  The ones I see have escorts that consist of motorcycle outriders and Crown Victorias with "Funeral Escort" instead of typical police markings, but they do not attempt to perform traffic control.  Many drivers still slow down, stop, refrain from proceeding through green signals, avoid overtaking the mourners, etc. as a sign of respect.

The last procession I encountered in person corked me in my subdivision by going past just as I rolled up to the stop sign at my usual exit point.  Before I gave up and reversed into the nearest driveway to find another way out, I spent close to ten minutes idling as not just the procession, but also all the other vehicles it had bottled up, passed.

[PHLBOS]

Then design the funeral ceremony to accommodate the travel time.

Time = money.  Especially with today's funeral costs.  Distances between funeral homes/places of worship and cemetaries vary a lot.  A long-distance procession (like the one for my great-aunt circa 1977) would've actually taken much longer and been more problematic (for both procession vehicles and surrounding traffic) if we used only local roads (w/more traffic lights) instead of I-93.

We don't allow "people may be unfamiliar with the area/in a compromised emotional state" to let people weasel out of traffic laws under any other circumstance, why should it suddenly be a concern when some guy kicked the bucket?

In terms of operations (& theory); Funeral Procession = Train

One certainly wouldn't dare interrupt a multi-car train going through a railroad crossing (all the cars are connected); similar logic should (IMHO) apply with when encountering funeral procession (such was the case when I was studying for my driver's test questions).  Vehicles in the procession need to stay close together (small gaps); which is one reason for the usually slower than posted speeds travel.  Wide and varying gaps between procession vehicles can definitely cause more problems for them as well as confuse surrounding non-procession vehicles.

To be clear, the lead vehicle still needs to obey all traffic laws and signs (nobody here, I believe, is disputing such); but the procession vehicles that follow should (IMHO) continue through any encountered red lights (that weren't red for the lead vehicle) and STOP signs (that the lead vehicle already stopped for); and, hence, keep the train together.

It is my understanding (& based on personal experience); that most funeral processions that take place (at least for the Greater Boston & Greater Philly areas) on weekdays are done after 9 AM, as to avoid encounters with rush-hour traffic.

I felt like there was just too much that could go wrong from someone misunderstanding our actions.

Again, vehicles in a funeral procession (beyond the usual hearse & limo) will have some type of identifier(s) on them (be it flags, windshield banners, emergency flashers on, etc.).  If an encountering motorist can't differentiate the above; then (IMHO) they shouldn't be driving in the first place.

I don't think the practice of having a funeral procession should be banned, just that it shouldn't be exempt from traffic laws designed to keep everyone safe.

A better idea would be for states to standardize (i.e. make more uniform/be consistent with) their rules & laws regarding funeral processions and what to do when encountering such.  IIRC, similar's been done for school bus situations (examples: stopping for school busses when their signals are on, school busses stopping at railroad crossings even when the signals/gates aren't on (EXEMPT crossings being the sole exception)).

[cl94]

In most of Upstate New York, funeral processions are quite common and almost always have at least one police escort to block intersections and at least one funeral home escort vehicle along with the hearse. Funeral home vehicles often have orange lights. Processions are typically done between the rush hours. People don't stop, but the vast majority don't attempt to interrupt the procession and the procession is given the right of way.

[jeffandnicole]

...Processions are typically done between the rush hours....

I've never heard of funerals at 7am or 4pm, when they would impact rush hours.

[Scott5114]

Then design the funeral ceremony to accommodate the travel time.

Time = money.

This is true for those delayed by the funeral procession too. Then again if we're going to make traffic decisions on saving people money, then we should also allow people with non-refundable tickets they're running late to and CEOs to blow through lights.

We don't allow "people may be unfamiliar with the area/in a compromised emotional state" to let people weasel out of traffic laws under any other circumstance, why should it suddenly be a concern when some guy kicked the bucket?

In terms of operations (& theory); Funeral Procession = Train

One certainly wouldn't dare interrupt a multi-car train going through a railroad crossing (all the cars are connected); similar logic should (IMHO) apply with when encountering funeral procession (such was the case when I was studying for my driver's test questions).  Vehicles in the procession need to stay close together (small gaps); which is one reason for the usually slower than posted speeds travel.

I don't agree that there's any need for them to stay together. It's convention, but it would work just as well for them to travel separately.

I felt like there was just too much that could go wrong from someone misunderstanding our actions.

Again, vehicles in a funeral procession (beyond the usual hearse & limo) will have some type of identifier(s) on them (be it flags, windshield banners, emergency flashers on, etc.).  If an encountering motorist can't differentiate the above; then (IMHO) they shouldn't be driving in the first place.

But sometimes they won't. The Oklahoma driver's manual does not specify what the identifiers of a funeral procession will be, so they could be anything. As I mentioned above, the only designation I was aware of was headlights on in the day. Apparently since then it's migrated to flashers, but I only would have known that from reading this thread. I've never seen flags (other than sports-team and sometimes American flags on individual vehicles, a practice that could make the funeral flags ambiguous). Depending on the situation it absolutely could be difficult to determine whether this is a funeral procession or not, particularly if you don't see the hearse.

I don't think the practice of having a funeral procession should be banned, just that it shouldn't be exempt from traffic laws designed to keep everyone safe.

A better idea would be for states to standardize (i.e. make more uniform/be consistent with) their rules & laws regarding funeral processions and what to do when encountering such.  IIRC, similar's been done for school bus situations (examples: stopping for school busses when their signals are on, school busses stopping at railroad crossings even when the signals/gates aren't on (EXEMPT crossings being the sole exception)).

Why would that be better than eliminating the practice?

n.b. using bold, italic and underline doesn't actually give your arguments any more weight.

[PHLBOS]

Why would that be better than eliminating the practice?

Short answer: continuation of a long-standing tradition (and not just in this country).

Funeral processions existed well before the proliferation of motor vehicles and traffic laws.  Originally, such was done with horse-drawn vehicles and the mourners followed mostly on foot (some might have used stagecoaches later on).  It was traditionally accepted that interruption of procession marches even by foot traffic was discouraged and considered disrepectful.  A similar mindset carried over when motor vehicles came on the scene.

Depending on the area, a procession broken up by other traffic (especially in a situation where a procession is entering a major road from a minor road) can cause unnecessary delays for all parties involved and possibly contribute to mourners possibly getting lost (and risk driving to endanger as a means to rejoin the procession/convoy).  Since mourners are already going through a rough time; the above disruption scenerios could cause more problems than it solves.

n.b. using bold, italic and underline doesn't actually give your arguments any more weight.

Such does point out key words that tend to get missed (by others, not necessarily you).

There have been several times (on this site and on others) where one will reply to a post and miss a key word that would've determined whether or not such a reply is applicable or even needed.

[Scott5114]

Why would that be better than eliminating the practice?

Short answer: continuation of a long-standing tradition (and not just in this country).

Funeral processions existed well before the proliferation of motor vehicles and traffic laws.  Originally, such was done with horse-drawn vehicles and the mourners followed mostly on foot (some might have used stagecoaches later on).  It was traditionally accepted that interruption of procession marches even by foot traffic was discouraged and considered disrepectful.  A similar mindset carried over when motor vehicles came on the scene.

Depending on the area, a procession broken up by other traffic (especially in a situation where a procession is entering a major road from a minor road) can cause unnecessary delays for all parties involved and possibly contribute to mourners possibly getting lost (and risk driving to endanger as a means to rejoin the procession/convoy).  Since mourners are already going through a rough time; the above disruption scenerios could cause more problems than it solves.

"We've always done it that way" has never been an argument that appeals to me.

Keeping people from getting lost is what road signs are for.

[PHLBOS]

Keeping people from getting lost is what road signs are for.

Agreed, but you know as well as I do that people will still get lost despite such.  Plus, not every intersection has decent signage.  I cordially invite you to parts of eastern MA or southeastern PA where signage is limited, sparce and/or substandard.

[cl94]

Keeping people from getting lost is what road signs are for.

Agreed, but you know as well as I do that people will still get lost despite such.  Plus, not every intersection has decent signage.  I cordially invite you to parts of eastern MA or southeastern PA where signage is limited, sparce and/or substandard.

Heck, that's the entire northeast, which is probably one of the reasons why funeral processions continue to be used extensively. If you don't know where something is, you're out of luck and a GPS isn't always helpful.

[DaBigE]

Why would that be better than eliminating the practice?

Short answer: continuation of a long-standing tradition (and not just in this country).

Funeral processions existed well before the proliferation of motor vehicles and traffic laws.  Originally, such was done with horse-drawn vehicles and the mourners followed mostly on foot (some might have used stagecoaches later on).  It was traditionally accepted that interruption of procession marches even by foot traffic was discouraged and considered disrepectful.  A similar mindset carried over when motor vehicles came on the scene.

Depending on the area, a procession broken up by other traffic (especially in a situation where a procession is entering a major road from a minor road) can cause unnecessary delays for all parties involved and possibly contribute to mourners possibly getting lost (and risk driving to endanger as a means to rejoin the procession/convoy).  Since mourners are already going through a rough time; the above disruption scenerios could cause more problems than it solves.

"We've always done it that way" has never been an argument that appeals to me.

I can appreciate both sides of this, but I also tend to think, "if it isn't broke, don't mess with it".

Maybe I am out of the loop, but how many crashes are caused by funeral processions (other than the one mentioned by the OP)? Frankly, I cannot recall any others in recent memory, which is why I would tend to side more with PHLBOS idea of standardizing the practice/laws across the country rather than outright abandonment. Maybe I am completely wrong, and the rest of the country has a crash epidemic caused by funeral processions.

[Pete from Boston]

I can appreciate both sides of this, but I also tend to think, "if it isn't broke, don't mess with it".

Maybe I am out of the loop, but how many crashes are caused by funeral processions (other than the one mentioned by the OP)? Frankly, I cannot recall any others in recent memory, which is why I would tend to side more with PHLBOS idea of standardizing the practice/laws across the country rather than outright abandonment. Maybe I am completely wrong, and the rest of the country has a crash epidemic caused by funeral processions.

This question remains unaddressed since the first post of the thread, which relied on the anecdotal evidence of one incident.

Further discussion of safety seems to be based on conjecture.

[hbelkins]

Some funeral homes do have little magnetic flags that they place on cars in the procession. The local funeral home, however, doesn't.

[SP Cook]

Why would that be better than eliminating the practice?

Short answer: continuation of a long-standing tradition (and not just in this country).

Funeral processions existed well before the proliferation of motor vehicles and traffic laws.  Originally, such was done with horse-drawn vehicles and the mourners followed mostly on foot (some might have used stagecoaches later on). 

A stage coach was public transportation, a pre-industrial version of a bus, "stage" being an old word for "station".  While people might have taken a horse and carriage, it is unlikely they would have taken a stage coach. 

In any event, this brings up some things mentioned about.  About 3 or 4 hour drives as funeral processions. 

In the pre-automobile world a funeral procession was limited to what a horse could do pulling a wagon.  Not to mention the state of embalming and such.   People were mostly buried near where they fell.  If someone was going to go elsewhere from the place of their funeral for burial, they would go as freight and the burial would be a separate service. 

Driving, at low speed particularly, many hours from the funeral location for a burial is certainly a new idea related to a car.  And it is dangerous and foolish.  If the funeral procession is more than 30 minutes or so, then just tell everyone to show up at the grave yard at 5 PM. 

[jeffandnicole]

Driving, at low speed particularly, many hours from the funeral location for a burial is certainly a new idea related to a car.  And it is dangerous and foolish.  If the funeral procession is more than 30 minutes or so, then just tell everyone to show up at the grave yard at 5 PM. 

30 minutes? 

In order to have a funeral procession lasting greater than 30 minutes, you would probably need 500 - 750 vehicles in that procession.  Figuring 2 mourners per car, that would translate to a service of 1,000 - 1,500 people.

As much as we all love each other, you are not going to get 1,000 people at a funeral.  All but the largest churches even have a capacity in the low hundreds, at best.  And most funeral homes can fit, at most, a few hundred people as well.  In both cases, a 500 spot parking lot is not going to be found at either place.  For comparisons sake: A large grocery or department store of 100,000 square feet needs 500 spots for parking.

So I don't know who the people here are grieving over, but most funeral processions are going to take a minute or two to go past any particular point.  Not over a half hour.

[Mr. Matté]

For those of you who say ban them or reserve willful disobedience of traffic laws to emergency vehicles, what about processions of nothing but emergency vehicles? Ban them too? This one seems far longer than the processions I've seen or been a part of.

That's for an actual funeral so I could understand some leeway for slow speed of the vehicles. But what about outside of the procession? At the time of the funeral for the NYC cops who were shot a while back, someone posted to Reddit a picture of a long line of Barnegat police cars on the GS Parkway (at the Driscoll Bridge) all in the right lane with lights flashing. I made a comment about whether or not the lights needed to be on (don't know if they were traveling faster or slower than the speed limit there) and was downvoted to oblivion. If laws were passed banning such long processions, the police would bend it anyway.


Now off-topic, but just a funny coincidence, on a election archival website I used to be a part of, the author of the video "had his political career destroyed" by another member of that website. Small world innit?

[tribar]

Yes.  It is completely unreasonable to inconvenience everyone just so that the hearse and everyone can get to a cemetery quicker.  There's enough hazards on roads as it is. 

[dfwmapper]

It seems odd that people so obsess over the burial of a body when so many religions tend to have a fundamental concept of the body as being merely a temporary vessel for the soul (or other equivalent term) that is vacated upon death. Whether you're off to be reincarnated or heaven/hell/purgatory or just dead, the body is of no use to you. I'm all for remembering and celebrating the life that was lived and the impact on the people around, but why do flesh and bones have such importance?

[oscar]

It seems odd that people so obsess over the burial of a body when so many religions tend to have a fundamental concept of the body as being merely a temporary vessel for the soul (or other equivalent term) that is vacated upon death. Whether you're off to be reincarnated or heaven/hell/purgatory or just dead, the body is of no use to you. I'm all for remembering and celebrating the life that was lived and the impact on the people around, but why do flesh and bones have such importance?

Not having done a survey, it seems that many religions think it's more complicated than that. For example, the Catholic Church has in recent years lightened up on its former insistence on burial, but even when cremation is allowed, it still insists on keeping the remains in one appropriate container as much as possible and interred ceremonially, rather than more informal dispositions such as scattering the ashes.

I don't know how much of the customary two-part funeral service with a procession is religion-driven. My mother's memorial service (she was a Catholic who chose cremation) was held at the historic California mission that was her parish church, with her ashes immediately interred at the on-site church cemetery, so there was no need for a procession.

[english si]

It seems odd that people so obsess over the burial of a body when so many religions tend to have a fundamental concept of the body as being merely a temporary vessel for the soul (or other equivalent term) that is vacated upon death. Whether you're off to be reincarnated or heaven/hell/purgatory or just dead, the body is of no use to you.

Catholicism may have grabbed too much Aristotle, IMO, but purgatory (a term that is exclusively its) shouldn't be on the list, as the Catholics kept enough Judeo-Christian thought to never doubt the importance of the physical body. Protestants likewise (even the Left Behind crowd with their eschatology from pulp thriller novels, rather than the Bible, believe in the 'Rapture' being with physical bodies). I don't think there's many Buddhists, Hindus, etc (or those who don't value the dead body, or believe in some sort of soul, like atheists and 'humanists') in the areas where these big long processions are common.

Burials, in my UK experience, need less driving about as, if the churchyard isn't open, then there's still going to be a nearby graveyard still accepting bodies and so house-church-graveyard won't be that far. Crematoriums, on the other hand, are relatively rarer, and so the journey is longer regardless.

There's no need for processions to be so long. When my great uncle Bill passed, we went to the house to see auntie Phil, we watched the procession of three or four cars (he had a lot of kids, grandkids and great-grandkids) move at walking pace through the street where he lived. They then did something to let us pass, and so my grandma, his sister-in-law, could (and, driving at the speed limit/traffic speed, we only arrived 5 minutes before, so they must have not been holding people up) be at the Crematorium (which now tend to be marked in every UK road atlas*) to see the procession arrive at walking pace through the grounds (the person walking in front of it, however, just did the street and the grounds). The priest or vicar held the service in the chapel there (if you hold one in the church, then the cremation would be private, as would a burial outside the churchyard).

Burials, in the UK, seem to me to be easier on traffic flow as the church will be closer to the street and there would be an open graveyard nearby, if not the churchyard itself. Unless you live in a big city, though the same issue applies to crematoriums, that is.

*partially as they are rather rare - each one tends to serve several hundred thousand people, or a good 50+ mile radius if the population is less dense.

[wxfree]

I've never seen a problem caused by them.  In my area, a motorcycle cop rides in front and and circles each intersection along which the route has a stop sign or traffic signal so that the intersection is cleared and everyone knows what's happening.  A second motorcycle cop will block the intersection until the procession is moving through, then he'll pass the procession and block the next one.  The hearse driver knows to stay far enough back and keep the pace.

I've been in a procession on an Interstate (Itasca, Texas to Hillsboro).  We had no special right-of-way (I think that's illegal), but on a freeway we didn't need it.  I didn't know where we were going, but I just followed closely enough that I could see where the hearse and other processioners were going.

I view this as being like a parade or other special event that has a permit to block traffic and get special treatment, and don't have a problem with it.  Maybe in some cases, such as roads near frequently-used cemeteries, it would cause too much trouble.  But I have no objection in principle.

[Pete from Boston]

It seems odd that people so obsess over the burial of a body when so many religions tend to have a fundamental concept of the body as being merely a temporary vessel for the soul (or other equivalent term) that is vacated upon death. Whether you're off to be reincarnated or heaven/hell/purgatory or just dead, the body is of no use to you. I'm all for remembering and celebrating the life that was lived and the impact on the people around, but why do flesh and bones have such importance?

Religion aside, flesh and bones matter because they are the physical person we know, the loss of which is traumatic.

I have no problem with cremation.  It is far cheaper, logistically easier, and provides more flexibility than a non-cremation funeral, in fact.  But I understand people's difficulty with it.  It's very hard to let go.  The traditional burial is a step in between life and death for the grieving, a chance for a last glimpse, to say goodbye.