Not exactly analogous. The booby traps are there in a house to cause bodily harm the spikes cause harm to property. The law and people in general tend to think about those things differently.
The big difference is damage to property vs. damage to person. Killing your tires is more akin to rigging a booby trap that steals the shoes of nefarious trespassers. Is that legal?
One of my favorite signs of that nature simply said…The Management Is Not Responsible.
That really explained a lot about the place.
Well if they wanted a fence, they could have one- of those arm thingies that raises and lowers, like every 99% of other parking lots I use.
A hijack, but it’s my first, so be gentle with me. 
I saw a picture of a Mercedes, illegally parked in front of a fire hydrant. The fire department had broken both driver and passenger side windows and ran a firehose through to get to the hydrant. I guess going over the car would have put to big of a kink in the hose.
J.
You continue to fail to appreciate the difference between someone else doing something affirmative (active) that damages your property, and you doing the thing that damages your property. Pouring sauce on you, rolling your car out of a spot, bashing in your windows – these are all things that are done to you or your car by someone else.
Spike strips do no harm to you by just existing. There they are, just laying there, minding their own business, soaking up some rays. YOU damage your own car when you drive over them. The person causing the damage is YOU, not the owner of the lot. This is a crucial difference.
Assuming the sign is appropriate to convey the necessary warning – legible, sizeable, coherent-- then if you choose to disregard the warning, you are responsble for the consequences. Might you back over the spikes by accident? Sure. But you could also back into a post by accident. (This happens all the time.) How is that the garage owner’s fault? And no, the sign does not have to be in Urdu and Esperanto on the off-chance that’s the driver’s only language. Again, the sign must be intended to (and actually must) convey the necessary warning in a reasonable way.
And, no, it is not the same as booby-trapping your house, which is illegal. Generally, you cannot intentionally cause injury in the defense of personal property.
Ah, the memories. Thirty or more years ago my high school debate team took part in a tournament in the Boston area. The coach parked the school van in a commercial parking lot with “cars go in, but they don’t come out” systems blocking the points of egress that you were not supposed to use.
I no longer recall if there were posted hours of operation for the lot and we should have known better than to be out as late as we were, or whether the lot was supposed to be open 24/7 and somehow wasn’t, but the bottom line was, when we got back to the parking lot that evening, the proper exit from the lot was blocked and there were no staff on duty to help us out.
The ONLY way out was through the path of severe tire damage.
We searched the area, found a rusting “No Parking” sign and wrenched it off of its post, then found a garbage can lid or something similar as well. We took the two items to the spikes, lined the van up right at the edge so we knew exactly where to place the parking sign/garbage can lid for protection, and drove over the spikes.
It worked!! Barely. As I recall, the “No Parking” sign was completely impaled on the spikes. But, the van’s tires were okay, and we were out of the garage.
The amazing this is this all happened under adult supervision. (Although I don’t know what we were supposed to do; find a pay phone and call the police maybe, but although the details are hazy so many years later, as I recall we really didn’t feel that we had any choice.)
Good thing we did not get caught, though.
I wonder what the attendant who showed up in the morning thought.
They could have one, but they are not required to. What, you don’t think a barricade arm would injure your car if you accidentally drove through it or they dropped it on you?
That’s just silly. By that logic I could toss some spike strips (with a sign) on the street in front of my house. Just across one lane, of course.
Then, when the cops come after me, I can say, “I didn’t do anything to their cars. They’re the ones that drove over the strips, not me.”
-Joe
The spikes didn’t just grow there. The owner put them there with the specific intention of damaging tires for people who do something he didn’t want them to do.
So, if I own a lot and put up a sign that says "No overnight parking, violators will have windshield smashed. " Does that put me in the clear when I start smashing windshields?
Minor point - there’s no ‘international license’. They’re driving on their own country’s licence, possibly accompanied with an International Driving Permit, which is basically a translation into English. (No idea if a Chinese licence is actually enough to drive in America, but a German one would be)
Anyone who backs up in their car, I would think, looks behind them first. A barricade arm can be seen and tells the person not to back up. These are found is most parking lots and I would say every driver is familiar with them- not so the spikes. The spikes are not visible to a person attempting to back up.
No different than if I’m at the Taco Drive thru and change my mind, I would look to see if there is another car behind me first.
Even if the spike strips are perfectly legal, can’t they devise something visible when you back up so you know “I am backing up, and am going to suffer for doing so”?
How would it be different than say a store that has an exit door labeled “Do not use this door as an exit. Doing so will cause damage to your clothing.” and it is rigged up so anyone that attempts to use that door gets sprayed with orange paint?
I don’t think the store would be able to not be held responsible just because someone was trying to leave and didn’t read the signs.
My booby traps are designed to burn the clothes off of trespassers. It’s their own darn fault if it hurts them in the process.
Also, with the comparison to a fence, it would be like having a fence with two openings- one you are allowed to go through, no problem, and the other, two feet away, that electrocutes you when you walk through.
There’s a difference between palces you are not allowed in, period, and places like a public parking lot.
You are stretching the point too far. The spikes realistically don’t pose much of a threat for personal bodily harm your flame thrower does.
Do you own the street in front of your house? Did you prominently sign the street “WARNING SEVERE TIRE DAMAGE IF YOU PROCEED”? Why would you think you would NOT be able to deploy spike strips on your own personal property?
What’s the problem grokking the difference between ACTIVELY DAMAGING someone’s property and warning them not to damage it themselves? I honestly don’t get what’s so hard about this. If YOU drive over a spike strip, YOU have damaged your car. It is NOT the same as breaking windows, keying the sides, slashing the tires, or any other action undertaken by SOMEONE ELSE.
The owner put the strip there not to damage cars, but to prevent people from illegally exiting the garage. If THEY damage their own cars, that’s on THEM – provided they are appropriately warned of the consequences of their own actions.
The big honking sign that says “DO NOT EXIT – SEVERE TIRE DAMAGE” should be visible to a person attempting to back up. And I don’t know anyone who doesn’t know what a spike strip is, or who couldn’t figure it out by a minute’s study of the nasty teeth poking out of the floor and the big warning signs.
Like, I don’t know, a big sign?
Well, first, anything you do to a person, as opposed to property, runs the risk of being considered an assault so it’s probably not a good idea. Second, the rationale for spike strips in parking lots (to either (a) prevent people from leaving without paying or (b) prevent them from endangering themselves by doing something like driving the wrong way down a one-way ramp into on-coming cars) does not exist for a store, which has other ways to monitor exits and which will not have customers trying to leave after hours. Third, spraying someone’s clothes with paint does not effect the desired result, which is to prevent them from leaving; it just ruins their clothes. So it is probably not going to be allowed since it causes damage and achieves nothing. Fourth, why WOULDN’T an appropriate sign be a good defense? DO NOT EXIT – WET CEMENT. DO NOT EXIT – DANGER – CONSTRUCTION ZONE. DO NOT EXIT – WET PAINT. What’s going to be the shopper’s excuse for just breezing through the door? A head injury?
I’d be interested to know what sort of boobytrap you have that burns only clothes and not flesh. You are not allowed to booby-trap your property to injure people. Whether your trap is injurious will be decided by a court after you get sued, not by you. The fact that the fault for the injury is with the trespasser (who wouldn’t be injured but for the trespass) cuts no ice; you cannot booby-trap your property to injure people.
Except that it’s nothing not like that at all, in that a spike strip doesn’t injure you unless you fall on it. There is a major difference between allowing a person to act in a way that will damage their property – after warning them not to – and allowing a person to act in a way that will injure them.
Can you just lay out spike strips and spring them on people? La la la drivin’ along POP! No, of course not. But on private property, appropriately signed, spike strips are in most places legal. Why wouldn’t they be? They don’t damage property until some moron drives over them. If the moron has been adequately warned – and that’s a crucial caveat – then the responsibility for the damage is on him.
Everyone keeps comparing this to a fence, but they’re leaving out the key detail
A fence truly intending to keep you out would have RAZOR WIRE on the top. This is perfectly legal since the Razor Wire is perfectly visible and is not actively harming anyone.
Once you do something extremely stupid, like trying to climb over the fence, you will be damaged. Your body will be damaged and your property (clothes) will be damaged. Yet… it’s ALL YOUR FAULT AND LEGAL!!!
Face it, you did a pretty stupid or careless thing by running over spikes. No matter how you twist shit around, the fact is it’s all your fault. Taking responsibility for your actions is part of being a grown-up. Stop looking for others to blame.
Y’know, this is the perfect opportunity to link to one of my favorite threads:
**What Would Happen If You Drove Over Those ‘Severe Tire Damage’ Spikes? **
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=189588&highlight=severe+tire+damage
The consensus of the thread was that your car would suffer severe tire damage.
Spike strips are not there to simply stop you from driving the wrong way through the wrong entrance/exit. Often, they’re there to prevent potentially deadly head-on collisions with cars traveling in the proper direction. Lesser of two evils, if you will. In many places where I’ve seen these things, it’s a blind spot where you can’t see what’s coming.