It’s part of our culture (I don’t know about others) to punish those who annoy us. Otherwise these lot owners would erect a barrier that keeps you in, but doesn’t do damage.
Great point!
Absolutely. It’s one reason our traffic lights have an extra stage (red - red & amber - green). I find that to be enough time to go from neutral to moving via the above description, even though when I was taught I was told to stay in first with the clutch down (no idea why).
Possibly urban myth, probably with an element of truth: the old-school London bus drivers had to pass a test which included a hill start in a manual transmission Routemaster, with a matchbox placed behind the back wheel, which had to remain intact. Which, given that the entrance & exit for passengers was at the rear and thus beside those wheels, actually had a clear safety role.
Oh, and the razor wire on top of fences is somehow irrelevant?
OK, the owner of the garage is no longer walking around and smashing random windshields. Instead, there is an automatic windshield smasher. Now, this robosmasher is PASSIVELY DESTROYING PROPERTY, because it wouldn’t have to if you hadn’t ACTIVELY parked in the parking lot.
Or for that matter the fact that a curb can do very similar damage to tires with the added bonus of you can trash very expensive wheels in the bargain. Furthermore they don’t even both to put up any warning signs for these implements of the devil. How can curbs be legal?
Some people just don’t get it. :rolleyes:
Oh, my brain! It shrivels before thee, o mighty tower of intellect! oh, the horror! the horror!
Because curbs aren’t intentionally designed to do so. If you create a system to intentionally damage the chattels of another when they trespass upon a limited area, you have a legal responsibility to adequately warn trespassers of that device.
Silicon Valley. You can fine-tune your pot-shots accordingly. It’s only fair.
AHHHHHHH, well, now we are talking the issue not of legality, but of negligence.
There are certain actions which are legal to engage in, but which if not done with proper care, can result in liability for any damage proximately caused. Proper care is usually considered the care that would be taken by a reasonably prudent person under similar circumstances. Damages “proximately” caused can be a fun law exam question, but would certainly include tire damage from a failure to warn of tire spikes (assuming that was considered a lack of due care).
Now, if there is in the political subdivision the spikes are located a set of regulations regarding proper use and signage of them, and a property owner fails to follow those rules/ordinances/statutes, then one could argue that the owner would be “negligent per se.” This puts the burden of proof onto the owner to show that the care taken WAS proper, even though it didn’t follow the statutory/regulatory law; the assumption by the court will be that the “illegal” use of the spikes is a lack of due care without any further offer of evidence by the injured party. Mind you, the damage complained of has to be the sort of damage the law seems to contemplate preventing, but again, here, that would be obviuosly the case (as opposed to, say, someone’s beach ball being punctured by the spikes in a strong wind).
So, in a given individual instance of use of the spikes, and a person with damaged tires, the calculus would go like this:
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Is the property owner required to exercise due care with regard to someone who uses the lot? (Here, one can presume that there will be an answer of “no” f the person damages their tires while attempting to leave without paying, and “yes” if the person backs up over the spikes for less nefarious reasons).
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Is there a state statute regarding use of the spikes? Is there a town ordinance? Is there a rule/regulation adopted by some body with authority?
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If there is, did the property owner who installed the spikes follow it/them?
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If yes, was there some other factor about the installation that was not what a reasonable person, exercising the care required, would have done?
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If the answer to 3 is no, then can the property owner offer any evidence sufficient to overcome the presumption that he/she was negligent?
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Can we establish that there wasn’t any fault on our own part in backing up over the tires?
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If not, then our damages will be reduced, depending upon the state we are in: in a contributory negligence state, we may be barred from recovering at all, if it is felt we were more at fault in causing the situation than the property owner was; in a comparative negligence state, our % of fault in causing the tire damage will be determined by the fact-finder, and our recovery reduced in proportion.
So, to restate what I said in my last post:
*2. They are legal. You’ve been answered this. They are legal because:
a. There is no specific law that prohibits the use of them, and
b. There is no common law principle which would compensate you as the owner of a vehicle who drives over them, so long as they are not negligently installed.*
Oh, and one more point. People have talked about regulations regarding installation of these devices, but no one has cited such a regulation or ordinance. Telmark made a tangential reference to them in one post. Wee Bairn, you might try simply searching to find such an ordinace, perhaps even with regard to the city in which you live.
Ok, but you will allow that there are many things that started out legal but are now illegal, when it was determined by a court that they should not be allowed. All it will take is one person suing over this to maybe get the ball started and maybe in 2010 they will be outlawed.
Someone somewhere surely has taken this to court, but results like this are obviously not big enough to make news or the internet, unless a court rules they are illegal across the board.
My additional problem with this is that a lot of times people don’t sue for things they should because the BS like “not responsible for rocks falling off this uncovered truck bed”, believing anything they read.
New things come up all the time for which there is no law to cover, until one is initiated.
So while I will allow that unless someone turns up something to the contrary, they may well be legal now, but hopefully someone in the future who is adversely affected will challenge it and get a law against it installed.
But additionally, do these really stop people from parking and dashing? A dishonest person I’m sure is probably aware of these and is not going to ruin his tires to aviod a parking tab, so they will either put things over the spikes as metnioned upthread, or devise another method. I would dare say the only people who get tire damage on these are honest patrons.
I’m sure a study of the number of honest vs. dishonest patrons affected by these would agree with my view, if there was one.
I don’t think you understand what passively means…
::: sigh:::
These spikes do nothing to honest patrons, unless they are dumber than a houseplant, and can’t / don’t read the signs. If a dishonest person tries to go out the in, he loses his tires.
In the case of the houseplant driver, a couple of new tires just might act as a wakeup call it could have been a kid they didn’t see. Think of it as a stupidity tax.
In all of my years of driving, I have never known anyone who lost a tire on these spikes. I have never heard of anyone who knew anyone who has lost a tire on these spikes. I have never had a car towed in for slashed tires from spikes. While I am sure it happens, based on my experience it is not very common.
On the other hand they act as a 100% deterrent, and do very effectively prevent park and dash at an extremely low cost, and very high reliability.
I don’t think you understand the difference between active and passive.
A “passive” injuring or damaging device would be one that can cause the injury or damage just as it is, without any action on its part. An electric fence that zaps you if you touch it. Something hot that burns you if you touch it. A spike strip that pops your tires if you drive over it. The device isn’t doing anything; it’s just sitting there, inert (though still dangerous). There isn’t any damage – cannot be any damage – until you touch it or drive over it or whatever active thing done by YOU is required to result in damage.
Thus, it is impossible to have a “robo-smasher” that is “PASSIVELY DESTROYING PROPERTY,” because when you are theorizing an action, like “smashing,” then you’re not talking about something that is passive. The fact that the action can be automated doesn’t make it passive.
So what causes the damage? The spike strip, just by existing, or the act (done by the driver) of driving over the spike strip? If there is clear warning that the spike strip is there and that damage will result if you drive over it, then the resulting damage is the driver’s fault if he drives over it.
This ain’t that hard.
But you will allow the possibility that there may exist an equally effective and similar low-maintenance deterrent for the dishonest, that has a lower chance of causing harm to the stupid or inattentive driver, right?
Some of you seem to feel that tire damage for the stupid or inattentive is a good thing 
Sure, name one.
ETA I have no problem with a wake up call for stupid drivers.
I tried to find some actual regulations relating to these devices:
http://www.danapointmarina.com/Rules%20&%20Regs.pdf - This appears to be a county facility. The relevant passage:
This isn’t a rule about posting signage, but it appears to address the basic issue.
Here’s one the manufacturers sites: http://www.westcoparking.com/md_spikes.htm
They also sell signs: http://www.westcoparking.com/warn_signs.htm but don’t mention the rules and regulations.
This website is somewhat dubious: http://billstclair.com/ferran/righttouseforce.html but does give a legal case to look up. Can anyone with legal access look up this case.
Here’s a place where they are specifically prohibited: http://www.cityofowasso.com/Com_Dev/ZoneCode/ZC_CHAPTER21.htm
I have no idea what any of these things costs- do we even know for a fact these are implemented solely as a cost saving measure and not for their potential to damage? What if it turned out they cost more than other deterrents?
Ah, Telemark thank you A start on the issue.
The City of Owasso regulation relates only to gated residential communities. Interesting to find out if Owasso is equally unhappy with their use in parking lots.
The Dana Point marina regs are part of a licensing agreement signed by those who are licensed to dock boats at the marina. I’ve been to that marina and there are tire spikes at many of the parking lot entrances. A very nice marina, by the way, if anyone ever has occasion to visit. Wave up the cliff at my father, who lives on high. 
I cannot find access to the People v. Kane case; I’m not even certain that the citation given is correct; it appears to have been spread out among a number of websites that are advocating use of guns to detain trespassing criminals on your property.
As for Wee Bairn: No, there are not things which were legal that the courts made illegal all of a sudden. Yes, at times, things which were not considered negligence become negligent acts later, but it isn’t likely that there would be a blanket prohibition in negligence law against use of tire spikes. And unless your tires were damaged, you wouldn’t have reason to sue, anyway.
Now, if you are advocating a law against their installation, well, then more power to you. But consider that, in the absence of any indication that legions of people are getting damaged tires from these things, it’s not likely to attract the positive attention of many lawmakers. So I’d start by collecting some data on the prevalence of people managing to innocently back-up over these things.