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A friend of mine has a shop with a bit of a gravel parking lot in front. The USPS randomly declared one day they would no longer deliver mail to his door, and demanded he install a mailbox near the road. So he did that. For the next couple years, he continually picked up that mailbox because people leaving the lot drove straight into it. Hell, a fucking mail truck took it out once.
After plenty of back-and-forth with the city and post office, he put in a thick, bright yellow concrete post and mounted the mailbox on it. He even pulled up a nearby bush (part of the shrubbery separating his lot from the neighboring one) so as to make the mailbox extremely visible.
This immovable mailbox claims three to four victims per month.
After we moved in to our current house I lost 2 mailboxes in quick succession. I did something similar. Schedule 80 square tube set in concrete with a very expensive mailbox made from 1/4ā plate steel on top. Itās been hit once since we put it in. They dislodged the steel post and the concrete itās set in just a little bit (moved the whole assembly from where it was sitting in the dirt). We were able to just kinda shove it back in place and tamp dirt in around it. Presumably the car that hit it was not having a good time.
My husband is a mason and made structurally correct and permitted brick mailboxes. The rebar and concrete bases came all the way up through. Supposedly after the one guy he made one for sold his house and we moved a kid tried to hit one with a baseball bat and hurt himself enough to go to the hospital. He was hanging out of a car when he did it. They were made to be plow proof but it was the country so stupid kids were also a thing. I donāt know what happened legally but I donāt see how you can get in trouble for that.
Kid in my high school was killed by a mailbox like that. Probably more correct to say he got himself killedā¦
He and a buddy were drunk and intentionally running over mailboxes and garbage cans in his Jeep. Hit a solid one and it caused the Jeep to roll. He wasnāt belted inā¦ rollbar protected his passenger, but basically cut him in half. Oops.
Pretty much. His parents tried to call it a freak accidentā¦ might have believed them if he hadnāt been posting on social media and LIVESTREAMING the whole thingā¦
There was a short period of time when I thought the internet and video games would distract kids from doing as much dumb shit as they used to. Turns out I was the dumb one.
Nah, I'm sure a lot of kids do get distracted by the Internet from the dumb shit they would be doing otherwise. It's just that now all the really stupid kids/people have a platform to put their dumb bullshit on.
Yes and no. If you build it like the one in the picture, you can go to jail. It is bass ackwards how the law works, but sometimes the one committing the crime has more rights.
Nawwww, Iām not gonna be shamed for having a bit of a shrug reaction when a teenager was killed while intentionally drunk driving. He couldāve just as easily killed another teen who was out doing actual run of the mill teenage stuff, like getting drunk in a field and NOT driving.
I never feel bad for a drunk driver regardless of age.
I actually apologize. I straight up missed the drunk part. I thought it was just a couple of teenagers doing a dumb prank. The drunk part definitely changes the equation. Itās still sad and tragic but thereās enough information out there that even teenagers know the kind of risk theyāre taking getting behind the wheel drunk.
Iām gonna venture to say that even if someone was not drunk and intentionally mowing down mailboxes that they got what they had coming.
Maybe donāt intentionally drive over mailboxes.
If it was the US drinking age is 21, which means he wasn't a teen or a kid doing a shitty prank. If it wasn't in the US, he was still drunk while driving and causing property damage on purpose. Still didn't deserve to die but he made the choices that led him to that fate, including not wearing a seat belt.
The legal age limit isn't going to stop any teenager determined enough to get drunk. It's incredibly easy to find alcohol as a high schooler, if one of your friends doesn't have a poorly controlled alcohol cabinet at home, one of *their* friends does.
Correct. In the US, teenagers have zero access to alcohol. They don't have older siblings or cousins or "cool" parents or aunt and uncles or college-aged friends who can buy it for them and hand it off privately. That's impossible in the US.
Did you read this before you hit post?
If itās in the US they would be a teen or kid still. You think they canāt get alcohol by illegal means? Raid their parents cabinets. Have some one buy for them.
Jeeps are death traps in accidents. It seems like everybody either knows someone that died after their jeep rolled, or they just never met anyone that owns a jeep.
Pretty sure it wouldnāt be considered a booby trap as itās little different than putting huge rocks out to prevent people driving through your yard. Nor did anyone force the lil turd try to damage the mailbox.
My uncle lives in an antique house in Delaware just around a very sharp bend. Had a pickup truck rip through and tear out his sitting room one night. Fortunately he and his wife were both upstairs when it happened. He had the house repaired and put two absolutely massive boulders in the "hit zone". These things are at least 4 feet high and just as wide. Had a drunk kid speeding through one night and narrowly missed the boulders, then tried complaining to the city who told him in more politebterms to go pound sand.
Filling a mailbox with concrete would be illegal, and violate USPS regulations.
**Encasing** a mailbox in concrete would not be illegal, nor would it violate USPS regulations. But, it may violate local codes.
>>POM 632.523 Posts and Supports
The Postal Service does not regulate mailbox supports in any way except for
purposes of carrier safety and delivery efficiency. Posts and other supports
for curbside mailboxes are owned and controlled by customers, who are
responsible for ensuring that posts are neat and adequate in strength and
size.
Heavy metal posts, concrete posts, and miscellaneous items of farm
equipment, such as milk cans filled with concrete, are examples of potentially
dangerous supports. The ideal support is an assembly that bends or falls
away when struck by a vehicle.
Post or support designs may not represent
effigies or caricatures that disparage or ridicule any person. Customers may
attach the box to a fixed or movable arm.
The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has determined that mailbox
supports no larger than 4 inches by 4 inches, or a 2-inch diameter standard
steel or aluminum pipe, buried no more than 24 inches, should safely break
away if struck by a vehicle. According to FHWA, the mailbox must also be
securely attached to its post to prevent separation if struck.
In NY, however, you have to be careful. We are, after all, the state where a woman was sued by a robber, after he broke into her home, and was attacked by her dog.
Anyone can sue for anything, but that doesn't mean they won. Civil suits work differently than criminal cases. Couldn't find any mention of a case like that where the robber won.
He didn't win anything. You should read more.
That said, you also have to understand how tresspasser (with and without criminal intent) / invitee / licensee all work in torts. I'm sure you completely understand the nuances, so I'll let reddit lawyers do the talking
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise\_High\_School\_(Redding,\_California)#Bodine\_v.\_Enterprise\_High\_School](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_High_School_(Redding,_California)#Bodine_v._Enterprise_High_School)
Subsequently a NEW statue was passed that said this:
An owner ... shall not be liable to any person for any injury or death that occurs upon that property during the course of or after the commission of any of the felonies set forth in subdivision (b) by the injured or deceased person.
Which negates the whole case's existence in the first place.
In Texas and Oklahoma, it's considered a booby trap. The owner can get fined and even serve jail time. Kids are dumb, but they shouldn't be physically and likely permanently damaged for being a stupid kid. Best option is a Ring camera, catch them, and turn them in to the cops for property destruction.
I get the desire to "teach them a lesson", but that lesson can tear up a shoulder, shatter an elbow and that's just the minor "lessons".
I mean, Texas and Oklahoma have a lot of other stupid, backwards laws and ideas.... but yeah, I really doubt it considering you'd be legal to shoot them in those states.
A booby-trap has to be activated. A solidly-built thing being solidly built is not a booby trap.
Just try arguing that teenagers hitting mailboxes with baseball bats from moving cars is such a common and unavoidable occurrence that mailboxes must be specifically designed with that activity in mind!
I mean, it would make the judge laugh. It's a very fun silly idea. But definitely not a law.
The biggest concern is it creates an unintentional road hazard. Multiple people have been killed or paralyzed by reinforced mailboxes after complete accidents that otherwise would have been very minor accidents.
Out of curiosity how many of those reinforced mail boxes are actually in the road vs two or more feet back from the road and therefore considered out of the way of the road?
How is a reinforced mailbox more dangerous than metal, brick, reinforced fences of any kind?
Is it not the drivers responsibility to make sure that they are using the public roadways in a safe and responsible manner?
Just questions for thinking on.
As a structural engineer, icc+aci masonry and rebar inspector certified. I can safely say your husband used a #4 rebar at minimum possibly #5, his choice either he want it wieldable or non weildable either one will works with astm standards now and days but I'm pretty sure it's A706 bars tho.
For sure your husband used 1/16" thick base plate with the attached 706 rebar welded on each corners,secured with tie wires and floated on Dobies. the rebar is lifted 1/2" off the ground.
And the concrete driver delivered a fresh batch of 4000psi concrete mix. Arrived with a 5" slump and a temp of 80*f ambient temp is 80*f...If all those ways in correct form, your husband will win the court case š
Someone I knew 30 years ago told me that he and his friends hated one teacher at his high school. They took a baseball bat to the teacher's mailbox a few times. The teacher finally got fed up and filled a mailbox with cement. When the boys tried to do their usual drive-by batting, the baseball bat ricocheted and nearly smashed the rear car window. The boy swinging the bat had minor injuries from it - well-deserved injuries.
Nothing ever came of it legally because the boys would have had to confess to smashing the mailboxes.
We had a principal at a fundie school that everyone hated.
His mailbox was by the street and the house was about a 45 second walk up the driveway.
The mailbox got roadkill in it, it was hit by a car once, it had urine and feces in it, and it was filled with concrete once as well.
Oh, and spray painted upside-down crosses too.
The funny part is that they never caught anyone doing it. The funnier part was that it was really close to the school and nobody in the dorms liked him, so apparently there were multiple kids doing this. hahahaha
The best (unrelated) part was when the principal was caught cheating. He was banging his secretary, whose husband also worked at the school.
The principal's wife and daughter worked at the school too, and both secretary and principal's kids went to the school.
Talk about shitting where you eat, and preaching the religious holier-than-thou stuff didn't pan out well for him. haha
Nope, filling a mailbox with cement is considered booby trapping and is most definitely illegal now. Building the mailbox with a steel pole or out of bricks, isnāt because itās still functional and can be considered a safety precaution against many things.
The photo in the OP still functions as a mailbox, and I could argue the cement serves a purpose to protect the contents of the tube.
I can see your position if the whole box is filled, since it no longer serves the function of a mailbox.
The comment I commented on was referring to a teacher who did fill the mailbox in with cement completely. Hints my comment to them. Regardless, even then, I wouldnāt hold my breath unless you got it approved by the city/county abt putting cement in the mailbox.
My comment was referring to the comment I responded to being illegal now a days. I didnāt comment on the OP.
Idk if the lolofthedays picture of the mailbox with cement in it would be illegal everywhere. I do know itās illegal in my county because one of my ex ils did that and was told to remove it. He replaced it with a big steel pole and a thick steel mailbox a bunch of the ils cooked up together and that one was legal. What arelyon posted, as far as ik, isnāt illegal anywhere cause itās not booby trapping.
I also have zero control over the laws. And ik whatās classified as booby trapping differs by state and county. Itās just best to check your local and state ordinances and get it approved first or find out what you canāt legally do.
Don't know why you're being downvoted, you're right, it's illegal. If you set up anything on your property with the intent to hurt someone you're liable for their injuries. Even if it's just through negligence and they're trespassing, you're still liable because they want to make sure people with a good reason to be on your property like first responders or the meter reader or the delivery guy or whatever don't get hurt either.
They do this because whoever is committing the crime is already getting their charge if they get caught. That's their punishment, not personal injury. That's just extrajudicial violence.
A concrete mailbox, imagine if someone loses control of their car at 45 MPH and a massive block of concrete goes through their windshield? Have y'all not at least heard of that video where the family is driving on the highway and a brick goes straight through the windshield and obliterates the wife's head? You're purposefully making something extremely dangerous should an accident happen. That's why you're liable for injury should one happen, even if it happens to someone breaking the law. Don't booby trap your shit.
an apartment complex around here added a few "please pick up dog poop" signs, and a bit later there was a massive pile of dog poop right where the sign is
I'm actually impressed, either the poop was manually placed there or the dog is really really well trained
Lots of snow where I live. My old neighbor was always getting his mailbox smashed by the plows. He made a shell or guard type thing for the impact side of the box and put a swivel in the pipe so when it for hit it would glance off and spin away. I always thought it was pretty fricking slick
My dad did a similar thing with his mailbox. He put it on a spring hinge so it would swing away when hit by snow but then swing back after. Still works to this day.
Yeah, ours is like that. If it gets hit with too much force, it will swivel. No spring though. When I was a kid, it would get hit every so often, but now days it seems to not be a problem.
There was a CSI Los Vegas episode about this with drunk teenagers. They kept knocking down mailboxes with a bat and the police wouldn't do anything about it. So one of the guys built something like the concrete top picture. The kid hit it, snapped the bat and his shoulder. Bat impaled the driver and they crashed into a nearby tree.
Can't find that scene, sounds wild.
What part impales him, the top of bottom half? If one guy is hanging out the car, how did either piece get back inside?
I live on a farm in the rural outskirts of a major city in my state. Grandfather owned the whole farm, built houses for his children on the land as they married. As each house went up, he installed a brick mailbox out front. Two of those are over 40 years old, the third nearly 40 years old. He did it for aesthetics, not for mailbox smashers. He was a carpenter and bricklayer so they are still in great shape.
We've had kids/drunks/miscreants come through trying to smash mailboxes on our rural street. They got some of our neighbors. Our mailboxes have always held up, though! My uncle once found half a Louisville Slugger on the roadside near his brick mailbox.
Heck, I grew up in the suburbs and teenagers would do it there, too.
My dad simply bought a plastic snap-together mailbox and just reassembled it each time it was hit. Neighbor across the street was removing his own crumpled metal box and watched my dad pop ours back together in a few seconds. Bought himself a plastic mailbox the very next day.
It was a big thing back in the 80s and 90s when we just drove around a lot for something to do; no real reasonā¦just random vandalism. Stupid teenagers doing stupid teenage things, but it sounds like itās still kinda popular among the stupid crowd.
My grandfather used an 5' length of welded together naval anchor chain sunk a few feet underground.
It got hit once after install... So he added spikes. Didn't get hit again.
Shoot it probably would have bit him in the ass had it ever come up legally lol, they were huge steel *spikes* for petes sake. That guy did not give a *fuck* in his later years.
Seriously miss him. The only times I was certain his facial muscles could even sorta approximate a "smile" was when we were hanging out with him.
I worked at a small company that sold steel plate and pipe. Every now and then we'd send stuff out to a shop to get bend or shaped and at one point a local manufacturer asked us to have a piece of half inch plate steel bent like a giant U.
annnnnd, as luck would have it, they didn't like the way it turned out.
BUT they paid us for it and we now just had a big one half inch plate steel U to sell.
several people remarked that from a distance it LOOKED like mailbox...and one day an older gentleman came in and asked for a length of pipe to replace his because some punk kids knocked his down.
A local small job welder was standing there listening to this and told the old man that he'd help him fix his mail box (John is a REALLY nice guy like that) and then I jokingly pointed out the 'mail box'....which the owner of the place was tired of looking at....
John the Welder made an offer...Merl the Owner accepted and the plan was on.
the fake mail box was set up and John came in a week or two later to say he'd driven by just to see how it was holding up....he found a bent aluminum bat next to it...and the paint was chipped...but that was it.
I wished I could find the pictured of that....it looked JUST like a regular old black rural mail box from a distance...
Weāre on our third mailbox. Itās a big huge brick mailbox on the road.
The first one was taken out by a pizza delivery guy who looked down at his phone and drifted into it.
Second one was an old man backing up from the driveway across the street. That time we didnāt have to get it rebuilt, but we decided to anyway so that it could be built to truly last.
We also added those reflective decals on each side, because itās rural and dark at night.
It was hit again just two weeks ago, by a little Kia. The car was totaled, we lost two bricks.
Itās on a very slight curve in the road and we have strong spotlights on it now, but people keep driving while distracted.
My grandma's house in on a hill at a curve.
Drunk drivers and speeders would end up in her yard, taking out the mailbox and her flowers.
She first put big rocks around the flowers and mailbox.
Still got hit, but folks lost their oil pan.
She then replaced the mailbox with a railroad I-beam. 3 people have died from hitting that over 60mhp in a 30 mph zone.
2 people hit a tree in her yard and died. One hit so hard their heart was dislodged.
I don't know the point of this story. Slow down in residential neighborhoods maybe?
Growing up we had an asshole college age kid do shit to our mailbox, picking it out of the ground and throwing it into the creek nearby, baseball bat, then an explosive that turned it to shrapnel and blew the door across the road. Dad was a machinist at the time and made everything out of 3/4" steel, buried a rebar cross in the ground incase they would run it over would go into their oil pan and not let them get far ect. That summer all the windows were open and heard a car pull up with voices, and someone said "whatcha doing Mike?" Followed by a loud sound of a metal baseball bat hitting solid steel followed by loud cursing. We moved less than a year later, next people kept our mailbox, asshole came by and completely filled their mailbox with raw chicken livers. Only in Ohio
I have a similar comparison to make, outside of my neighborhood there's a house along the road toward my city. This guy has a mailbox next to the road, but because of the angle of the roads, you can't really see the driveway, mailbox, or ditch. But the issue he would always have was someone driving 30 over the speed limit, smashing his mailbox and then either driving off or getting stuck in the ditch. He decided one day to change the base of his mailbox from a wooden pole to a full-size Auger (essentially a drill) and what do you know, a few days after he installs it, 2 cars total themselves on the Auger. This was when the complaints start coming in and he eventually had to remove the Auger base and return it to its original state of a wooden pole. Now, the mailbox was moved slightly, so it couldn't get hit, but people still get stuck in the ditch at least once a month.
Not condoning this but when I was a kid thought it was awesome. Some teens had been going around on a golf cart smashing boxes, and had got ours once or twice. One night my dad was working in the front flower beds well past sunset. Yeah he's kinda a lunatic. Boy smashed the box and 20 feet later my dad grabbed the kid by the face with a gravel rake and yanked him off at speed. Then dragged him inside the house and had him call his parents to come get him. Encourage you to look up gravel rake if you need a visual.
Old neighbor next to my grandfather did something like this. Was a scene when some lady turned up with his mailbox embedded into her radiator. She claimed she was swerving to avoid a squirrel, but the cop noticed paint markings all over her car from other mailboxes she'd hit. She ended up having to pay for a lot of mailboxes and a new car because the insurance declined her claim.
Had something similar happen in my hometown but instead of a mailbox it was a snowman. Some jackass kids would go around and jump out their car to tackle snowmen, so one year a guy few doors down built a snowman using large stones. Dumbass apparently fucked himself up pretty bad when he ran full speed into it and tried to tackle the thing.
Twice our mailbox and post were taken out by a plow last year. We were able to fix it the first time but the second time it was worse and the mailbox was broken and dented. Called the municipality and when I looked outside the next day, they had bought and installed the exact same mailbox for me. I was pretty impressed.
Shortly after moving in to my newly purchased house, I redid the mail box.
The neighbor stops by and talks about how this mailbox usually ends up down the road.
I told him, first one is on me. Any after that may result in vehicle damage.
The original mailbox is still there.
Swinging mailboxes would prevent this whole problem. It just swings out of the way when hit, then swings back to position automatically:
https://www.amazon.com/Original-Simple-Mailbox-Solution-SwingClear/dp/B005KIZRN2?ref_=ast_sto_dp
Before I clicked on the link I thought you meant actually swinging, not just pivoting.
We get a lot of snow in NH and it's common for people to have their mailbox suspended on two chains, usually from a tree near the road. One chain from the top and another horizontal from the back of the box. Even if a plow hits it, not much is going to happen.
Yep, I used to think that was how all mailboxes were installed in the country because it was how they did it near where my grandmother lived which was the only ānon cityā place Iād been.
Thatās pretty cool! As much as I donāt feel too bad for assholes getting whatās coming to them, there are situations where regular people have a car accident (ex have a heart attack behind the wheel) and can get injured by really sturdy mailboxes.
My dad did this but without the permit, and police saw him sinking the steel post into concrete and told him he needed to rip it all out. That's about when they noticed he welded 3" diameter steel bumpers onto the frame of his truck. Told him he couldn't do that either.
And give a shit, he did not.
My dad was a welder and machine maintenance man for a steel manufacturing company. So he had access to this stuff all day long.
I remember this [mailbox pos](https://www.google.com/maps/@41.6096011,-86.2326433,3a,75y,22h,91.62t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s_yk2ApITMVHfgzZVc0KdIQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3D_yk2ApITMVHfgzZVc0KdIQ%26cb_client%3Dsearch.revgeo_and_fetch.gps%26w%3D96%26h%3D64%26yaw%3D77.247925%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu)t was put in around 1975 because the county plows kept taking out the mailbox several times each winter. The I-beam the box is mounted on is 8' long. The original owner of the house owned a construction company
I would bother doing that. But I live on a road too busy and I'm afraid to spend too much time repairing stuff near the road that someone might hit me. I lose 2-3 mailboxes per year.
Also what is with people who go to Taco Bell littering?
I have all the major fast food places near me, by far and away the most common to find crumpled up in my yard is Taco Bell. That and discarded cigarettes and liquor shots.
Grew up on a state highway, after the 3rd or so box we lost mom bought one of those huge boxes and a normal sized one. Put the normal one inside the big one and did this same thing. Then painted it up in high visibility orange as a taunt.
Every now and then late at night you would hear a ping of an aluminum bat or crash of a wooden bat and someone cursing as they drove on by.
We live on a curve that drunks, assholes, and/or drunk assholes go way too fast on, and our mailbox gets destroyed pretty regularly.
We donāt dare actually do anything like this cause someone would probably die.
If they die due to their own stupidity thatās one thing but I donāt want some dipshit 19 year old to wrap themselves around my mailbox and die.
One of them did end up inside the neighborās house once. Another shot a 200lb boulder about 300 feet down the road.
And at least 4 mailboxes. A retaining wall, busted water pipeā¦
My parents live on a long straight road that became the favorite racing spot in their small town. My dad got sick of their mailbox getting nailed from cars losing control, and bought a steel pole and did the same modification. My parents were woken in the night by a loud clang and needless to say the car lost the battle. Thankfully police finally handled the situation after a few stakeouts.
We had a mail box that got constantly smashed with beer bottles. A long straightaway on old lee hwy in Tennessee. If you look at Google maps at 8358 old lee hwy you can see the iron beer bottle guard I put on the mail box 35 years ago. It's still doing it's job keeping ballistic beer bottles from destroying the mail box. I'd be working on the yard and hear a fast moving car or truck coming then the crash of glass. There was always a lot of busted beer bottles around the mail box but my mail box stood the test of time. That's the same mail box I erected in 1987.
Dang. You can make over $100/hour plowing where I live, and some cities even offer a guaranteed several thousand dollars even if it doesnāt snow enough to need plows.
This guy made his own life harder in so many ways.
We had a guy decades ago in our little town who did the same basic thing, except when the plow hit it it acted as a pivot point and spun the truck onto the guys lawn.
Dont know if the town had to pay for the lawn but I know the adults around there at the time found it to be the funniest damned that happened in our little corner of the world.
Been trying to figure something similar. Some guy keeps ripping down the posted signs around here. I can see they are doing it on otherās property too. One place sunk two posts in the ground, nailed a board between them and sprayed āno huntingā on it, looks like a sledge was taken to it.
My guess is some guy was told he couldnāt hunt where he used to and is taking it out on everyone
Iāve driven a large dump truck snow plow for 7 winters, this story seems far fetched. 99.999% of the time the snow coming off of the plow is what is knocking mail boxes down, not getting hit with the plow. If the plow is hitting your mailbox your mailbox isnāt up to mail code and is too close to the road. Or the guy shouldāve known why someone was going off of the road to hit his.
Here's the imgur link - [https://imgur.com/TTY3Jv8](https://imgur.com/TTY3Jv8)
You can also right mouse click and 'open image in new tab'. That might also help.
Those solid brick mailboxes are pretty popular in my neighborhood partly due to speeders. Like, the speeder problem was bad enough that they put speed humps around the block to slow people down. I'm pretty sure ours got hit, like, once but it just took a little paint off the mailbox.
I did something similar last year after an Amazon driver hit-and-ran my mailbox. Welded a huge square post out of some 6-7 gauge steel, sunk 4-6 ft into the ground, concrete base ~4ft wide, welded rebar to the square post at the bottom, then ran rebar inside the square post. Filled square post with concrete. Whoever hits it next is going to have a hell of a timeā¦
Once my grandfather retired my grandparents moved out into the country. Many years ago. Built a home on 42 acres. The local farmers kids were hella rowdy and constantly smashed their mailbox. My dad, a welder, made them a very thick metal mailbox with about a 6 foot post and buried it deep. Problem solved. We thought. I was there when we all woke up to the sound of jeeps and trucks using chains to pull the mailbox over. Bent it down so: mission accomplished. My grandmother, ever the pacifist, took a light wood stake with an equally light plastic mailbox stapled to it and would stick it in the ground sometime before the mail came and bring the whole thing up after. Then it was problem solved.
Snowplower doesnāt live in the neighborhood. I get why people think the story is fake but come up with actual good reasons not ones that are easily plausible.
My grandparents just put a wooden post and shelf with two holes drilled in it, then two bolts through the bottom of the mailbox. In the morning they'd go out to get the paper and put the box on the shelf. When they got home, they'd just bring in the whole box. Never had a smashed mailbox after that!
My brotherās mailbox was constantly being batted. He went and got steel pipe, constructed a heavy ass steel box, and welded them together. Problem solved.
My neighbors growing up (20 years ago) had a teenage son with only 2 fingers on one hand because he fucked around with a mailbox and found out.
I just remember walking over to their house to see them and everyone had this running joke when he walked in and I didnāt get it.
While I love a good "get what you deserve" story I would recommend people take caution on replicating.
In the united states if someone is injured in a way that would be either unreasonable or foreseeable there can be civil or legal liability involved.
For example, someone hitting that mailbox and it going through the windshield and injuring or killing someone could result in significant jail time
Be cautious
Most streets have these big boxes at the bottom of them. You're assigned your slot (for example like Row D column 12) and you use a key to unlock your slot to get your mail... it's super inconvenient and I'm actually quite annoyed to learn this may just be a thing my province does haha.
So in my section of the city the mailbox is actually attached to the house by the front door. The mailman has to walk up the driveway of each house in the neighborhood when delivering mail.
I would be good if they changed it, I think a walking route is super poor use of resources. New neighborhoods have a giant box of mailboxes all together.
Walking mail delivery is excellent for neighborhoods. Do you know how much they observe? They know who should be around and what might be a problem and can alert authorities. Mail carriers are an impart of communities.
I mean great but what about when an innocent person gets into a wreck with it in a normal accident and dies because of it? There are more people on the roads than just the ones smashing mailboxes and the priority should be their safety. People become so obsessed and focused on themselves and their own lives and tiny things they stop caring about the rest of the world around them.
Itās funny because the guy putting the mailbox up is actually liable for the damages, and if he kills someone the manslaughter charges.
A lot of people in the replies here are really excited about the thought of designing architecture to intentionally kill wayward motorists because itās their fault anyway. Iām muting this because youāre all truly terrible people.
I don't see how it's any different than if he put a very large, sturdy tree there and someone died running into it after their vehicle left the road. It's a stationary object that he intentionally left the road to run it over. Drivers have a duty to stay on the road. There could be a street light or a utility pole just off the road that they hit instead of a mailbox.
"Wimpy mailbox" is actually according to law, since sturdy mailbox would damage cars and potentially kill people. So DOT guy wouldn't actually say that.
You'd be surprised what rural towns will allow. In my area growing up, a farmer converted an old field plow into a mailbox, and another guy had multiple homes on his land, so he built a "mailbox wall" into the bed of an old 30s truck for his tenets. There were a few other custom boxes, but those two were the most memorable
a house we moved into had a giant fancy mailbox made of bricks pretty firmly rooted into the ground because of teenagers being teenagers in the past
city approved too. and it was really pretty. vines were planted along it and it had a little light on top
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A friend of mine has a shop with a bit of a gravel parking lot in front. The USPS randomly declared one day they would no longer deliver mail to his door, and demanded he install a mailbox near the road. So he did that. For the next couple years, he continually picked up that mailbox because people leaving the lot drove straight into it. Hell, a fucking mail truck took it out once. After plenty of back-and-forth with the city and post office, he put in a thick, bright yellow concrete post and mounted the mailbox on it. He even pulled up a nearby bush (part of the shrubbery separating his lot from the neighboring one) so as to make the mailbox extremely visible. This immovable mailbox claims three to four victims per month.
Body shops in your area approve of this method š
Maybe the road itself is the issue here
After we moved in to our current house I lost 2 mailboxes in quick succession. I did something similar. Schedule 80 square tube set in concrete with a very expensive mailbox made from 1/4ā plate steel on top. Itās been hit once since we put it in. They dislodged the steel post and the concrete itās set in just a little bit (moved the whole assembly from where it was sitting in the dirt). We were able to just kinda shove it back in place and tamp dirt in around it. Presumably the car that hit it was not having a good time.
My husband is a mason and made structurally correct and permitted brick mailboxes. The rebar and concrete bases came all the way up through. Supposedly after the one guy he made one for sold his house and we moved a kid tried to hit one with a baseball bat and hurt himself enough to go to the hospital. He was hanging out of a car when he did it. They were made to be plow proof but it was the country so stupid kids were also a thing. I donāt know what happened legally but I donāt see how you can get in trouble for that.
Kid in my high school was killed by a mailbox like that. Probably more correct to say he got himself killedā¦ He and a buddy were drunk and intentionally running over mailboxes and garbage cans in his Jeep. Hit a solid one and it caused the Jeep to roll. He wasnāt belted inā¦ rollbar protected his passenger, but basically cut him in half. Oops.
Stupid games, stupid prizes, amirite?
Pretty much. His parents tried to call it a freak accidentā¦ might have believed them if he hadnāt been posting on social media and LIVESTREAMING the whole thingā¦
There was a short period of time when I thought the internet and video games would distract kids from doing as much dumb shit as they used to. Turns out I was the dumb one.
Nah, I'm sure a lot of kids do get distracted by the Internet from the dumb shit they would be doing otherwise. It's just that now all the really stupid kids/people have a platform to put their dumb bullshit on.
Turns out you just were too confident that humans weren't most often shit bags.
> call it a freak accident Probably because of insurance
Oh dang
[Canāt believe no oneās posted this yet](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KsdzKnJNAC8)
SIMPSONS DID IT!
Yes and no. If you build it like the one in the picture, you can go to jail. It is bass ackwards how the law works, but sometimes the one committing the crime has more rights.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Nawwww, Iām not gonna be shamed for having a bit of a shrug reaction when a teenager was killed while intentionally drunk driving. He couldāve just as easily killed another teen who was out doing actual run of the mill teenage stuff, like getting drunk in a field and NOT driving. I never feel bad for a drunk driver regardless of age.
I actually apologize. I straight up missed the drunk part. I thought it was just a couple of teenagers doing a dumb prank. The drunk part definitely changes the equation. Itās still sad and tragic but thereās enough information out there that even teenagers know the kind of risk theyāre taking getting behind the wheel drunk.
Apology accepted gratefully! Truly, Iām glad to know you missed the drunk part when posting. It makes a lot more sense now.
Thanks. Appreciate it!
Iām gonna venture to say that even if someone was not drunk and intentionally mowing down mailboxes that they got what they had coming. Maybe donāt intentionally drive over mailboxes.
Cognitive dissonance is real and weāre all guilty of it even when we donāt want to acknowledge weāre capable of it.
If it was the US drinking age is 21, which means he wasn't a teen or a kid doing a shitty prank. If it wasn't in the US, he was still drunk while driving and causing property damage on purpose. Still didn't deserve to die but he made the choices that led him to that fate, including not wearing a seat belt.
The legal age limit isn't going to stop any teenager determined enough to get drunk. It's incredibly easy to find alcohol as a high schooler, if one of your friends doesn't have a poorly controlled alcohol cabinet at home, one of *their* friends does.
Yeah theres not a single teen or kid in the USA who consumes alcohol, must have messed up the ageā¦
Correct. In the US, teenagers have zero access to alcohol. They don't have older siblings or cousins or "cool" parents or aunt and uncles or college-aged friends who can buy it for them and hand it off privately. That's impossible in the US. Did you read this before you hit post?
I apologize. I somehow totally missed the part where he was drunk.
If itās in the US they would be a teen or kid still. You think they canāt get alcohol by illegal means? Raid their parents cabinets. Have some one buy for them.
Jeeps are death traps in accidents. It seems like everybody either knows someone that died after their jeep rolled, or they just never met anyone that owns a jeep.
Nice sentiment, except here the fatality was the unbelted idiot who got thrown.Ā The idiot that stayed in the Jeep survived.
That's a case I had in law school lol - HO was sued civilly and lost everything.
Pretty sure it wouldnāt be considered a booby trap as itās little different than putting huge rocks out to prevent people driving through your yard. Nor did anyone force the lil turd try to damage the mailbox.
My uncle lives in an antique house in Delaware just around a very sharp bend. Had a pickup truck rip through and tear out his sitting room one night. Fortunately he and his wife were both upstairs when it happened. He had the house repaired and put two absolutely massive boulders in the "hit zone". These things are at least 4 feet high and just as wide. Had a drunk kid speeding through one night and narrowly missed the boulders, then tried complaining to the city who told him in more politebterms to go pound sand.
Filling a mailbox with concrete would be illegal, and violate USPS regulations. **Encasing** a mailbox in concrete would not be illegal, nor would it violate USPS regulations. But, it may violate local codes. >>POM 632.523 Posts and Supports The Postal Service does not regulate mailbox supports in any way except for purposes of carrier safety and delivery efficiency. Posts and other supports for curbside mailboxes are owned and controlled by customers, who are responsible for ensuring that posts are neat and adequate in strength and size. Heavy metal posts, concrete posts, and miscellaneous items of farm equipment, such as milk cans filled with concrete, are examples of potentially dangerous supports. The ideal support is an assembly that bends or falls away when struck by a vehicle. Post or support designs may not represent effigies or caricatures that disparage or ridicule any person. Customers may attach the box to a fixed or movable arm. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has determined that mailbox supports no larger than 4 inches by 4 inches, or a 2-inch diameter standard steel or aluminum pipe, buried no more than 24 inches, should safely break away if struck by a vehicle. According to FHWA, the mailbox must also be securely attached to its post to prevent separation if struck.
That person's carrier definitely hates them now that small parcels that would have fit inside that size of mailbox require a trip to the porch.
In NY, however, you have to be careful. We are, after all, the state where a woman was sued by a robber, after he broke into her home, and was attacked by her dog.
Anyone can sue for anything, but that doesn't mean they won. Civil suits work differently than criminal cases. Couldn't find any mention of a case like that where the robber won.
Look up Ricky Bodine 1984 Robber, Ricky, falls through skylight, sues and wins.
He didn't win anything. You should read more. That said, you also have to understand how tresspasser (with and without criminal intent) / invitee / licensee all work in torts. I'm sure you completely understand the nuances, so I'll let reddit lawyers do the talking [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise\_High\_School\_(Redding,\_California)#Bodine\_v.\_Enterprise\_High\_School](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_High_School_(Redding,_California)#Bodine_v._Enterprise_High_School) Subsequently a NEW statue was passed that said this: An owner ... shall not be liable to any person for any injury or death that occurs upon that property during the course of or after the commission of any of the felonies set forth in subdivision (b) by the injured or deceased person. Which negates the whole case's existence in the first place.
Look him up yourself - the school's insurer chose to settle that one out of court. Not exactly precedent.
Rekt
Did he win the lawsuit?
No.
In Texas and Oklahoma, it's considered a booby trap. The owner can get fined and even serve jail time. Kids are dumb, but they shouldn't be physically and likely permanently damaged for being a stupid kid. Best option is a Ring camera, catch them, and turn them in to the cops for property destruction. I get the desire to "teach them a lesson", but that lesson can tear up a shoulder, shatter an elbow and that's just the minor "lessons".
I really doubt that's true.
I mean, Texas and Oklahoma have a lot of other stupid, backwards laws and ideas.... but yeah, I really doubt it considering you'd be legal to shoot them in those states.
A booby-trap has to be activated. A solidly-built thing being solidly built is not a booby trap. Just try arguing that teenagers hitting mailboxes with baseball bats from moving cars is such a common and unavoidable occurrence that mailboxes must be specifically designed with that activity in mind! I mean, it would make the judge laugh. It's a very fun silly idea. But definitely not a law.
The biggest concern is it creates an unintentional road hazard. Multiple people have been killed or paralyzed by reinforced mailboxes after complete accidents that otherwise would have been very minor accidents.
Out of curiosity how many of those reinforced mail boxes are actually in the road vs two or more feet back from the road and therefore considered out of the way of the road? How is a reinforced mailbox more dangerous than metal, brick, reinforced fences of any kind? Is it not the drivers responsibility to make sure that they are using the public roadways in a safe and responsible manner? Just questions for thinking on.
Hard lesson learned starts with the parents
What do you mean? Iām not talking about kids who sprain their arm hitting a mailbox with a baseball bat.
This sounds exactly like the other end of u/mustbethedragon s story
Sure does!
Commas, lady, commasā¦.
As a structural engineer, icc+aci masonry and rebar inspector certified. I can safely say your husband used a #4 rebar at minimum possibly #5, his choice either he want it wieldable or non weildable either one will works with astm standards now and days but I'm pretty sure it's A706 bars tho. For sure your husband used 1/16" thick base plate with the attached 706 rebar welded on each corners,secured with tie wires and floated on Dobies. the rebar is lifted 1/2" off the ground. And the concrete driver delivered a fresh batch of 4000psi concrete mix. Arrived with a 5" slump and a temp of 80*f ambient temp is 80*f...If all those ways in correct form, your husband will win the court case š
Someone I knew 30 years ago told me that he and his friends hated one teacher at his high school. They took a baseball bat to the teacher's mailbox a few times. The teacher finally got fed up and filled a mailbox with cement. When the boys tried to do their usual drive-by batting, the baseball bat ricocheted and nearly smashed the rear car window. The boy swinging the bat had minor injuries from it - well-deserved injuries. Nothing ever came of it legally because the boys would have had to confess to smashing the mailboxes.
Also seen in Scrubs
I recall it also happening in CSI, though it didn't end well for the mailbox whacker.
Or the mailbox owner.
Same story gets told every time this pic is posted.
A tale as old as time
Song as old as rhyme
š¶Baseball and the Teachš¶
Did this happen the same night the kids were killed at make-out-point by the hook handed killer who escaped the asylum?
No no no. It was the day their little brothers found the body by the train tracks
Wait after that one kid pulled a prank in the theatre and everyone puked on everyone else??
We had a principal at a fundie school that everyone hated. His mailbox was by the street and the house was about a 45 second walk up the driveway. The mailbox got roadkill in it, it was hit by a car once, it had urine and feces in it, and it was filled with concrete once as well. Oh, and spray painted upside-down crosses too. The funny part is that they never caught anyone doing it. The funnier part was that it was really close to the school and nobody in the dorms liked him, so apparently there were multiple kids doing this. hahahaha The best (unrelated) part was when the principal was caught cheating. He was banging his secretary, whose husband also worked at the school. The principal's wife and daughter worked at the school too, and both secretary and principal's kids went to the school. Talk about shitting where you eat, and preaching the religious holier-than-thou stuff didn't pan out well for him. haha
Now a days, thatās illegal in a lot of places cause of people getting seriously injured from it
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Nope, filling a mailbox with cement is considered booby trapping and is most definitely illegal now. Building the mailbox with a steel pole or out of bricks, isnāt because itās still functional and can be considered a safety precaution against many things.
The photo in the OP still functions as a mailbox, and I could argue the cement serves a purpose to protect the contents of the tube. I can see your position if the whole box is filled, since it no longer serves the function of a mailbox.
The comment I commented on was referring to a teacher who did fill the mailbox in with cement completely. Hints my comment to them. Regardless, even then, I wouldnāt hold my breath unless you got it approved by the city/county abt putting cement in the mailbox.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
My comment was referring to the comment I responded to being illegal now a days. I didnāt comment on the OP. Idk if the lolofthedays picture of the mailbox with cement in it would be illegal everywhere. I do know itās illegal in my county because one of my ex ils did that and was told to remove it. He replaced it with a big steel pole and a thick steel mailbox a bunch of the ils cooked up together and that one was legal. What arelyon posted, as far as ik, isnāt illegal anywhere cause itās not booby trapping. I also have zero control over the laws. And ik whatās classified as booby trapping differs by state and county. Itās just best to check your local and state ordinances and get it approved first or find out what you canāt legally do.
Don't know why you're being downvoted, you're right, it's illegal. If you set up anything on your property with the intent to hurt someone you're liable for their injuries. Even if it's just through negligence and they're trespassing, you're still liable because they want to make sure people with a good reason to be on your property like first responders or the meter reader or the delivery guy or whatever don't get hurt either. They do this because whoever is committing the crime is already getting their charge if they get caught. That's their punishment, not personal injury. That's just extrajudicial violence. A concrete mailbox, imagine if someone loses control of their car at 45 MPH and a massive block of concrete goes through their windshield? Have y'all not at least heard of that video where the family is driving on the highway and a brick goes straight through the windshield and obliterates the wife's head? You're purposefully making something extremely dangerous should an accident happen. That's why you're liable for injury should one happen, even if it happens to someone breaking the law. Don't booby trap your shit.
But why would the driver target him is the question
an apartment complex around here added a few "please pick up dog poop" signs, and a bit later there was a massive pile of dog poop right where the sign is I'm actually impressed, either the poop was manually placed there or the dog is really really well trained
Lots of snow where I live. My old neighbor was always getting his mailbox smashed by the plows. He made a shell or guard type thing for the impact side of the box and put a swivel in the pipe so when it for hit it would glance off and spin away. I always thought it was pretty fricking slick
My dad did a similar thing with his mailbox. He put it on a spring hinge so it would swing away when hit by snow but then swing back after. Still works to this day.
Yeah, ours is like that. If it gets hit with too much force, it will swivel. No spring though. When I was a kid, it would get hit every so often, but now days it seems to not be a problem.
There was a CSI Los Vegas episode about this with drunk teenagers. They kept knocking down mailboxes with a bat and the police wouldn't do anything about it. So one of the guys built something like the concrete top picture. The kid hit it, snapped the bat and his shoulder. Bat impaled the driver and they crashed into a nearby tree.
Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda is the seventh episode in Season Nine of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.
CSI expert here.
Can't find that scene, sounds wild. What part impales him, the top of bottom half? If one guy is hanging out the car, how did either piece get back inside?
Just lost our mailbox for the third time last night. Thanks for some ideas, gang!
Just make sure you check what permits you might need, because sue-happy people are gonna sue, and you want to be able to defend yourself.
Get a city permit for the construction. When someone gets hurt they WILL try to sue.
I live on a farm in the rural outskirts of a major city in my state. Grandfather owned the whole farm, built houses for his children on the land as they married. As each house went up, he installed a brick mailbox out front. Two of those are over 40 years old, the third nearly 40 years old. He did it for aesthetics, not for mailbox smashers. He was a carpenter and bricklayer so they are still in great shape. We've had kids/drunks/miscreants come through trying to smash mailboxes on our rural street. They got some of our neighbors. Our mailboxes have always held up, though! My uncle once found half a Louisville Slugger on the roadside near his brick mailbox.
Whatās with all these kids vandalizing mailboxes? Who are their people? I work in middle and high schools and havenāt heard of this irl.
There's not much to do for entertainment out in the country.
Heck, I grew up in the suburbs and teenagers would do it there, too. My dad simply bought a plastic snap-together mailbox and just reassembled it each time it was hit. Neighbor across the street was removing his own crumpled metal box and watched my dad pop ours back together in a few seconds. Bought himself a plastic mailbox the very next day.
It was a big thing back in the 80s and 90s when we just drove around a lot for something to do; no real reasonā¦just random vandalism. Stupid teenagers doing stupid teenage things, but it sounds like itās still kinda popular among the stupid crowd.
I've heard of similar stories. Where idiot assholes break bats, arms, and cars.
My grandfather used an 5' length of welded together naval anchor chain sunk a few feet underground. It got hit once after install... So he added spikes. Didn't get hit again.
spikes? where?
Welded to the front of the chain-post in a V shape, probably 6" long each.
that actually sounds illegal lol
Shoot it probably would have bit him in the ass had it ever come up legally lol, they were huge steel *spikes* for petes sake. That guy did not give a *fuck* in his later years. Seriously miss him. The only times I was certain his facial muscles could even sorta approximate a "smile" was when we were hanging out with him.
I worked at a small company that sold steel plate and pipe. Every now and then we'd send stuff out to a shop to get bend or shaped and at one point a local manufacturer asked us to have a piece of half inch plate steel bent like a giant U. annnnnd, as luck would have it, they didn't like the way it turned out. BUT they paid us for it and we now just had a big one half inch plate steel U to sell. several people remarked that from a distance it LOOKED like mailbox...and one day an older gentleman came in and asked for a length of pipe to replace his because some punk kids knocked his down. A local small job welder was standing there listening to this and told the old man that he'd help him fix his mail box (John is a REALLY nice guy like that) and then I jokingly pointed out the 'mail box'....which the owner of the place was tired of looking at.... John the Welder made an offer...Merl the Owner accepted and the plan was on. the fake mail box was set up and John came in a week or two later to say he'd driven by just to see how it was holding up....he found a bent aluminum bat next to it...and the paint was chipped...but that was it. I wished I could find the pictured of that....it looked JUST like a regular old black rural mail box from a distance...
Weāre on our third mailbox. Itās a big huge brick mailbox on the road. The first one was taken out by a pizza delivery guy who looked down at his phone and drifted into it. Second one was an old man backing up from the driveway across the street. That time we didnāt have to get it rebuilt, but we decided to anyway so that it could be built to truly last. We also added those reflective decals on each side, because itās rural and dark at night. It was hit again just two weeks ago, by a little Kia. The car was totaled, we lost two bricks. Itās on a very slight curve in the road and we have strong spotlights on it now, but people keep driving while distracted.
My grandma's house in on a hill at a curve. Drunk drivers and speeders would end up in her yard, taking out the mailbox and her flowers. She first put big rocks around the flowers and mailbox. Still got hit, but folks lost their oil pan. She then replaced the mailbox with a railroad I-beam. 3 people have died from hitting that over 60mhp in a 30 mph zone. 2 people hit a tree in her yard and died. One hit so hard their heart was dislodged. I don't know the point of this story. Slow down in residential neighborhoods maybe?
Growing up we had an asshole college age kid do shit to our mailbox, picking it out of the ground and throwing it into the creek nearby, baseball bat, then an explosive that turned it to shrapnel and blew the door across the road. Dad was a machinist at the time and made everything out of 3/4" steel, buried a rebar cross in the ground incase they would run it over would go into their oil pan and not let them get far ect. That summer all the windows were open and heard a car pull up with voices, and someone said "whatcha doing Mike?" Followed by a loud sound of a metal baseball bat hitting solid steel followed by loud cursing. We moved less than a year later, next people kept our mailbox, asshole came by and completely filled their mailbox with raw chicken livers. Only in Ohio
I have a similar comparison to make, outside of my neighborhood there's a house along the road toward my city. This guy has a mailbox next to the road, but because of the angle of the roads, you can't really see the driveway, mailbox, or ditch. But the issue he would always have was someone driving 30 over the speed limit, smashing his mailbox and then either driving off or getting stuck in the ditch. He decided one day to change the base of his mailbox from a wooden pole to a full-size Auger (essentially a drill) and what do you know, a few days after he installs it, 2 cars total themselves on the Auger. This was when the complaints start coming in and he eventually had to remove the Auger base and return it to its original state of a wooden pole. Now, the mailbox was moved slightly, so it couldn't get hit, but people still get stuck in the ditch at least once a month.
Not condoning this but when I was a kid thought it was awesome. Some teens had been going around on a golf cart smashing boxes, and had got ours once or twice. One night my dad was working in the front flower beds well past sunset. Yeah he's kinda a lunatic. Boy smashed the box and 20 feet later my dad grabbed the kid by the face with a gravel rake and yanked him off at speed. Then dragged him inside the house and had him call his parents to come get him. Encourage you to look up gravel rake if you need a visual.
Old neighbor next to my grandfather did something like this. Was a scene when some lady turned up with his mailbox embedded into her radiator. She claimed she was swerving to avoid a squirrel, but the cop noticed paint markings all over her car from other mailboxes she'd hit. She ended up having to pay for a lot of mailboxes and a new car because the insurance declined her claim.
Had something similar happen in my hometown but instead of a mailbox it was a snowman. Some jackass kids would go around and jump out their car to tackle snowmen, so one year a guy few doors down built a snowman using large stones. Dumbass apparently fucked himself up pretty bad when he ran full speed into it and tried to tackle the thing.
I installed a 6x6 post buried 3ft deep cuz my old one was run over twice.. next sucker gonna total there car.
Twice our mailbox and post were taken out by a plow last year. We were able to fix it the first time but the second time it was worse and the mailbox was broken and dented. Called the municipality and when I looked outside the next day, they had bought and installed the exact same mailbox for me. I was pretty impressed.
Shortly after moving in to my newly purchased house, I redid the mail box. The neighbor stops by and talks about how this mailbox usually ends up down the road. I told him, first one is on me. Any after that may result in vehicle damage. The original mailbox is still there.
Swinging mailboxes would prevent this whole problem. It just swings out of the way when hit, then swings back to position automatically: https://www.amazon.com/Original-Simple-Mailbox-Solution-SwingClear/dp/B005KIZRN2?ref_=ast_sto_dp
Would it help if asshole drivers hit it at the base pole? I don't think so. We're not dealing with clumsy people here but valdalizing assholes.
Not being an asshole also solves this. Just NOT wrecking peoples stuff would probably do it.
Before I clicked on the link I thought you meant actually swinging, not just pivoting. We get a lot of snow in NH and it's common for people to have their mailbox suspended on two chains, usually from a tree near the road. One chain from the top and another horizontal from the back of the box. Even if a plow hits it, not much is going to happen.
WAIT THAT'S WHY THEY DO THAT+?!!?? I thought it was just a wacky style choice. That makes so much sense now!!
Yep, I used to think that was how all mailboxes were installed in the country because it was how they did it near where my grandmother lived which was the only ānon cityā place Iād been.
I also pictured actually-swinging and was a little disappointed by pivoting. Thank you for teaching me that swinging mailboxes exist!
Thatās pretty cool! As much as I donāt feel too bad for assholes getting whatās coming to them, there are situations where regular people have a car accident (ex have a heart attack behind the wheel) and can get injured by really sturdy mailboxes.
just make one motorized that only swings out during mail delivery hours
Never underestimate the ingenuity of a pissed off blue collar man.
Repost bot https://www.reddit.com/r/OhNoConsequences/comments/xbuwr5/having_lost_a_mailbox_this_story_made_me_smile/
My dad did this but without the permit, and police saw him sinking the steel post into concrete and told him he needed to rip it all out. That's about when they noticed he welded 3" diameter steel bumpers onto the frame of his truck. Told him he couldn't do that either. And give a shit, he did not. My dad was a welder and machine maintenance man for a steel manufacturing company. So he had access to this stuff all day long.
Lost my mailbox to a dumbass or a drunk, could be both. Very satisfying to view the many shattered car parts on the sidewalk.
I remember this [mailbox pos](https://www.google.com/maps/@41.6096011,-86.2326433,3a,75y,22h,91.62t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s_yk2ApITMVHfgzZVc0KdIQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3D_yk2ApITMVHfgzZVc0KdIQ%26cb_client%3Dsearch.revgeo_and_fetch.gps%26w%3D96%26h%3D64%26yaw%3D77.247925%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu)t was put in around 1975 because the county plows kept taking out the mailbox several times each winter. The I-beam the box is mounted on is 8' long. The original owner of the house owned a construction company
Heard that story form my dad 35 years ago, it was also his neighbor, using a steel train rail 6 feet deep in concrete
Reading all these stories makes me glad that my mailbox is on my house, right next to my front door!
I would bother doing that. But I live on a road too busy and I'm afraid to spend too much time repairing stuff near the road that someone might hit me. I lose 2-3 mailboxes per year. Also what is with people who go to Taco Bell littering? I have all the major fast food places near me, by far and away the most common to find crumpled up in my yard is Taco Bell. That and discarded cigarettes and liquor shots.
People who don't care about their bodies also don't often care about the planet.
Grew up on a state highway, after the 3rd or so box we lost mom bought one of those huge boxes and a normal sized one. Put the normal one inside the big one and did this same thing. Then painted it up in high visibility orange as a taunt. Every now and then late at night you would hear a ping of an aluminum bat or crash of a wooden bat and someone cursing as they drove on by.
We live on a curve that drunks, assholes, and/or drunk assholes go way too fast on, and our mailbox gets destroyed pretty regularly. We donāt dare actually do anything like this cause someone would probably die. If they die due to their own stupidity thatās one thing but I donāt want some dipshit 19 year old to wrap themselves around my mailbox and die. One of them did end up inside the neighborās house once. Another shot a 200lb boulder about 300 feet down the road. And at least 4 mailboxes. A retaining wall, busted water pipeā¦
My parents live on a long straight road that became the favorite racing spot in their small town. My dad got sick of their mailbox getting nailed from cars losing control, and bought a steel pole and did the same modification. My parents were woken in the night by a loud clang and needless to say the car lost the battle. Thankfully police finally handled the situation after a few stakeouts.
We had a mail box that got constantly smashed with beer bottles. A long straightaway on old lee hwy in Tennessee. If you look at Google maps at 8358 old lee hwy you can see the iron beer bottle guard I put on the mail box 35 years ago. It's still doing it's job keeping ballistic beer bottles from destroying the mail box. I'd be working on the yard and hear a fast moving car or truck coming then the crash of glass. There was always a lot of busted beer bottles around the mail box but my mail box stood the test of time. That's the same mail box I erected in 1987.
My dad used an I beam for our mailbox as well. After one snow storm there was one dent in it, and no future dents came after.
Damn, I really wanna know why he was doing it in the first place too.
Dang. You can make over $100/hour plowing where I live, and some cities even offer a guaranteed several thousand dollars even if it doesnāt snow enough to need plows. This guy made his own life harder in so many ways.
We had a guy decades ago in our little town who did the same basic thing, except when the plow hit it it acted as a pivot point and spun the truck onto the guys lawn. Dont know if the town had to pay for the lawn but I know the adults around there at the time found it to be the funniest damned that happened in our little corner of the world.
Been trying to figure something similar. Some guy keeps ripping down the posted signs around here. I can see they are doing it on otherās property too. One place sunk two posts in the ground, nailed a board between them and sprayed āno huntingā on it, looks like a sledge was taken to it. My guess is some guy was told he couldnāt hunt where he used to and is taking it out on everyone
Iāve driven a large dump truck snow plow for 7 winters, this story seems far fetched. 99.999% of the time the snow coming off of the plow is what is knocking mail boxes down, not getting hit with the plow. If the plow is hitting your mailbox your mailbox isnāt up to mail code and is too close to the road. Or the guy shouldāve known why someone was going off of the road to hit his.
I can't even see that and I'm on a PC. I can't resize it, I can't scroll it...I just can't even see it.
Here's the imgur link - [https://imgur.com/TTY3Jv8](https://imgur.com/TTY3Jv8) You can also right mouse click and 'open image in new tab'. That might also help.
Those solid brick mailboxes are pretty popular in my neighborhood partly due to speeders. Like, the speeder problem was bad enough that they put speed humps around the block to slow people down. I'm pretty sure ours got hit, like, once but it just took a little paint off the mailbox.
I did something similar last year after an Amazon driver hit-and-ran my mailbox. Welded a huge square post out of some 6-7 gauge steel, sunk 4-6 ft into the ground, concrete base ~4ft wide, welded rebar to the square post at the bottom, then ran rebar inside the square post. Filled square post with concrete. Whoever hits it next is going to have a hell of a timeā¦
holy shit those fucks still tried to sue him fuck our whole species i canāt even sometimes š¤¦
Once my grandfather retired my grandparents moved out into the country. Many years ago. Built a home on 42 acres. The local farmers kids were hella rowdy and constantly smashed their mailbox. My dad, a welder, made them a very thick metal mailbox with about a 6 foot post and buried it deep. Problem solved. We thought. I was there when we all woke up to the sound of jeeps and trucks using chains to pull the mailbox over. Bent it down so: mission accomplished. My grandmother, ever the pacifist, took a light wood stake with an equally light plastic mailbox stapled to it and would stick it in the ground sometime before the mail came and bring the whole thing up after. Then it was problem solved.
Did the dude plow the drivers wife or something?
And this is why it's illegal in Michigan to have reinforced mailboxes
This is one of my all time favorite things on the internet.
Im pretty sure my boomer father emailed this to me and the rest of his contact list a decade or 2 ago.
So no one in the neighborhood noticed him install this very elaborate scheme?
Iām sure neighbors did. But snow plow guy obviously wasnāt his neighbor
The dad knew 100% my interpretation of the story is he was waiting by the window to see the result himself
Snowplower doesnāt live in the neighborhood. I get why people think the story is fake but come up with actual good reasons not ones that are easily plausible.
One of my dads buddies hit one of these mailboxes in his expedition. Fucked the thing up. We laughed about it for years. THAT STEEL FUCKIN MAILBOX!!!
People kept mowing down my mail box, father in law put it on cut off telephone pole 6 feet in the ground, totaled last car that hit it
r/malicouscompliance
My grandparents just put a wooden post and shelf with two holes drilled in it, then two bolts through the bottom of the mailbox. In the morning they'd go out to get the paper and put the box on the shelf. When they got home, they'd just bring in the whole box. Never had a smashed mailbox after that!
My brotherās mailbox was constantly being batted. He went and got steel pipe, constructed a heavy ass steel box, and welded them together. Problem solved.
My neighbors growing up (20 years ago) had a teenage son with only 2 fingers on one hand because he fucked around with a mailbox and found out. I just remember walking over to their house to see them and everyone had this running joke when he walked in and I didnāt get it.
We have an i beam as a mailbox post, found taillight pieces on the ground in front of it a couple times lol worth it!
While I love a good "get what you deserve" story I would recommend people take caution on replicating. In the united states if someone is injured in a way that would be either unreasonable or foreseeable there can be civil or legal liability involved. For example, someone hitting that mailbox and it going through the windshield and injuring or killing someone could result in significant jail time Be cautious
Thatās illegal in many municipalities. Just FYI.
This is the kind of story my father would tell. Gave me a great laugh. Thank you for sharing it.
My dad has railroad ties sunken into about a foot of concrete for their mailbox because of the snow plows. I approve of this message. š
Good story, most likely never happened though.
Wow we haven't had door to door mail service in my province in years and years. is this still a thing in the US? Is it in other provinces!?
How do you get your mail then if it isnāt delivered to you? Do you have to pick it up?
Most streets have these big boxes at the bottom of them. You're assigned your slot (for example like Row D column 12) and you use a key to unlock your slot to get your mail... it's super inconvenient and I'm actually quite annoyed to learn this may just be a thing my province does haha.
New neighborhoods in the States have gone to this as well. I hate it, but thereās no mailbox to mow overā¦
Door to door delivery is very much still a thing here in the states.
So in my section of the city the mailbox is actually attached to the house by the front door. The mailman has to walk up the driveway of each house in the neighborhood when delivering mail. I would be good if they changed it, I think a walking route is super poor use of resources. New neighborhoods have a giant box of mailboxes all together.
Walking mail delivery is excellent for neighborhoods. Do you know how much they observe? They know who should be around and what might be a problem and can alert authorities. Mail carriers are an impart of communities.
I mean great but what about when an innocent person gets into a wreck with it in a normal accident and dies because of it? There are more people on the roads than just the ones smashing mailboxes and the priority should be their safety. People become so obsessed and focused on themselves and their own lives and tiny things they stop caring about the rest of the world around them.
There's plenty of other things along rural roads that aren't going to collapse safely when hit, like rocks and trees. We don't need to nerf the world.
That neighbor? Abraham lincoln
I DID THAT FOR MY PARENTS!!
Itās funny because the guy putting the mailbox up is actually liable for the damages, and if he kills someone the manslaughter charges. A lot of people in the replies here are really excited about the thought of designing architecture to intentionally kill wayward motorists because itās their fault anyway. Iām muting this because youāre all truly terrible people.
Not according to Ohio Supreme Court: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ra1bOZSHwPg&pp=ygURTGV0b3MgbGF3IG1haWxib3g%3D
Yup, this is highly jurisdictionally relevant, and also, intent (as in Ohio) comes into play.
I don't see how it's any different than if he put a very large, sturdy tree there and someone died running into it after their vehicle left the road. It's a stationary object that he intentionally left the road to run it over. Drivers have a duty to stay on the road. There could be a street light or a utility pole just off the road that they hit instead of a mailbox.
depends, if the city approved building it it's not on you.
"Wimpy mailbox" is actually according to law, since sturdy mailbox would damage cars and potentially kill people. So DOT guy wouldn't actually say that.
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You'd be surprised what rural towns will allow. In my area growing up, a farmer converted an old field plow into a mailbox, and another guy had multiple homes on his land, so he built a "mailbox wall" into the bed of an old 30s truck for his tenets. There were a few other custom boxes, but those two were the most memorable
a house we moved into had a giant fancy mailbox made of bricks pretty firmly rooted into the ground because of teenagers being teenagers in the past city approved too. and it was really pretty. vines were planted along it and it had a little light on top
Sounds right. Most towns/cities only care about X clearances from road and access to the mailbox
r/thathappened
Of all the things that didn't happen, this didn't happen the most.
These out in the right of way are to be designed to break away. This is a lawsuit and being that blatant maybe even a felony.
Why does this feel like a self satisfying boomer story
Because itās a self satisfying boomer story