Huh. All I see is cars playfully pushing a large-ish rock around.
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I’m just going to jump in here to point out the vast gulf that exists between:
- I want to prevent people from driving over my strip of gravel
and
- I want to penalize with vehicular damage anyone who has the temerity to drive over my strip of gravel
If the person truly cared about the former, they would not have set up a system where they know (as evinced by the fact that they point a camera at it with what I can only assume is chortling glee) vehicles will strike the rock and be damaged by it.
Whether the drivers “should have” seen the rock, whether they “should have” had enough room to turn around without driving onto his property, etc., doesn’t really make a difference; it’s a disproportionate act on the part of the property owner. The intentional placement (and replacement) of the rock is clearly done with such malign purpose and antipathy that I almost feel bad for this person and the bleakness of their empty soul.
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I can sympathise, but I think he’s gone a bit too far.
I own a garage with my flat, but I don’t own a car, so I generally let whoever would like to, park in the space in front of my garage.
But my folks come to visit a few times a year, and are both in their seventies, with Dad being an amputee.
So when they do, I put a sign on the garage door and any car parked in front of it asking if they can leave my space available for the duration of their visit.
Last time I did so, a guy moved the car, but was then told by his partner who owns the car and rents the flat below mine to move the car back, because the landlord she rents from apparently told her my land was hers.
Cue much angry waving of property deeds.
She didn’t seem to understand that the ground in front of my garage, that I have the keys for, is mine.
It made me angrier than it probably should have.
Now, any obstruction I put there would be large and obvious, and probably smart so I could control it from the comfort of my flat.
I could probably also charge people to use my space, as I would be well within my rights to.
The point being, I wasn’t even thinking of this before someone took advantage.
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I think that rock is about 1 foot 8 inches tall.
Maybe if they lowered the road the rock would be more visible?
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(inb4 “water curtain”)
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So much this. All he had to do is put a tall plastic bollard with a weighted bottom on the corner (which you can buy at the hardware store) and problem solved. It’s tall enough to see, so nobody will hit it. Instead he gleefully chose to cause thousands of dollars in damage and ruin the day for untold numbers of people he doesn’t know.
This guy is a dick, full stop.
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Things that are definitely traps will get you in trouble; but there are some more mixed verdicts when it comes to doing things that you have reason to suspect will cause major damage; but only if there’s a deviation from ordinary travel.
In Snay v. Burr an Ohio court found that the guy who built one of those armored anti-vandal mailboxes did not breach any duty of care or otherwise put himself on the hook for the consequences after he was sued by a motorist who was catastrophically injured after leaving the road and striking that mailbox.
The majority didn’t seem just super keen on the idea; and the dissent much less so; so I wouldn’t want to roll the dice myself(also, I suspect that ‘it was technically legal’ probably wouldn’t make me feel better about inflicting massive spinal damage on someone); but they did find in his favor.
Clearly various other destructive-but-correctly-placed traffic barriers are also legally accepted: the stuff the professionals use typically has some safety considerations built in(eg. Jersey barriers having the little deflector slopes in the hopes of nudging you back, rather than just stopping you cold); but it’s not uncommon to see (brightly painted) steel tubes full of concrete or reinforced concrete pillars used to keep traffic out of pedestrian areas in some parking lots and the like; and, while those are never sneaky about it, they would really mess a car up where it to come to a straight fight.
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It’s interesting you mention mailboxes, because I have to replace mine every year thanks to the county snowplows, and I have been told in no uncertain terms that I cannot do anything to reinforce my setup in such a way that it would cause damage to those county vehicles, or any other vehicles. I have to eat the cost of the damage (repair/replace, including in-ground concrete) so that they don’t, legally.
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Yah, this is why we need courts, I guess. There’s a lot of gray area between the extremes. I think in this case it would come down to intent. Was the guy trying to damage cars, or was he trying to create a visual indicator? The evidence in this thread seems to lean toward the former, simply because he had so many better options for things to put there that would be highly visible and not cause damage if hit, and he created a YT channel. All of that speaks to intent IMHO.
There’s gray area even with big rocks though. My neighbour’s water line comes up out of the ground on the edge of our shared dead-end road, and his driveway is the end of the road. People get down here and realize it doesn’t go anywhere so they turn around. They were constantly doing three point turns into his water line and breaking it. So he put a BIG rock in front of it that would definitely cause a lot of damage if you hit it, and in all fairness to drivers might not be visible in some situations (such as deep snow).
However in his case it has to be a big rock because he has to physically protect the water line from cars. It’s not enough to warn people away. It has to be a physical barrier for two ton death machines driven by distracted teenagers. If someone hit his rock, I think a court would come down in his favour on that one, unlike our British friend here who is only protecting his own fussiness.
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IANAL, but both legally and ethically speaking, two missing pieces in this calculus are 1) intent; and 2) harm reduction. We tolerate reinforced concrete bollards blocking off pedestrian pathways because the alternative is risking a multiple-instance vehicluar homicide if a driver makes an error or if someone tries to use their vehicle as a weapon. If you knowingly put the same bollard somewhere to cause a collision, just to fuck with people, you’re not only a horrible person, you’re probably committing a crime.
(There’s certainly a fuzzy boundary about what harms ought to be reduced and what intents are reasonable, and that’s where the courts come in.)
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Times that by however many tires actually go over that spot. Road damage caused by vehicles is usually cumulative. A pot hole doesn’t typically appear the first time someone drives over a weak spot of road surface, but maybe several thousand.
I have a really wide driveway that’s perfect for driving onto to turn around and people do it all the time, instead of going just a hundred feet further where the street turns and there is more than plenty of room to turn around. I used to get fired up about it. But I decided some time ago it’s not worth my blood pressure. Though sometimes I have to remind myself I shouldn’t care, I generally don’t let it rile me anymore. Gotta keep my Stoic on, and don’t worry about things I can’t control (and don’t matter).
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I have to disagree.
It’s always the responsibility of the driver not to hit things.
ALWAYS.
It doesn’t matter if the object is small or obscured, even less-so if it’s in a place you shouldn’t be driving.
Like I said in an earlier post, that rock could be a small child on a tricycle.Who’s in the wrong if it was a small child just sitting there? Not the homeowner. (objectively not a smart thing to do n this situation, I agree, but… that’s how you know it’s not an issue of the homeowner being a jerk.
Are there better solutions? Sure. But the imo homeowner’s not wrong for doing this. The bad drivers behind a half tonne of steel and glass are the ones in the wrong, that have to be more aware, simply because of the potential damage they can do.
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Both things are true. It’s the responsibility of the driver not to hit things. It’s also manifestly unethical for someone knowingly and with malicious intent to create opportunities for drivers to hit things.
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No.
Yes.
All human interactions involve a division of shared responsibility. You can’t roll bowling balls down an interstate in the fog and laugh because it’s ALWAYS all those drivers’ responsibilities not to hit things. You can’t dive in front of a bus and then blame the driver because it’s ALWAYS the driver’s responsibility not to hit things.
The responsibility is not equal of course. For car/pedestrian interactions, the vast majority of the responsibility is on the driver, but nobody’s responsibility in an interaction is ever zero.
In the case of “man places rock in unexpected location that is explicitly low enough to be difficult to see from a driving position with deliberate intent to cause damage”, well, I think it’s pretty clear the responsibility balance has shifted dramatically. Drivers still bear the majority, but I’d call it 60/40 in that case.
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See also another favorite topic of BBS discourse: brake-checkers.
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I don’t disagree. This is why it takes a court to settle issues I guess.
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I would like to see this movie now.
Perhaps a game show. With appropriate safety measures and prizes for everyone.
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Kinda sad to say that was almost an example from my youth. I was at a teenage party with some drunk kids who were older than me but too young to be drunk. One of them was clearly working through a lot of shit that I was too young to recognize. The party was in a shitty condo that nobody seemed to know who actually owned. This guy found a bowling ball in the closet and declared loudly that “It would be so cool to roll this down [busy nearby roadway with steep hill]. I’m doin’ it!”. I didn’t see him after that and I never found out if he actually did it. He sounded serious about it, but I hope it was just drunk teenager talk. 
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