Besides - a block of concrete the size of a mailbox is pretty seriously heavy - it’s not something that is going to be “easy” to carry in and out…
It was common in my area long before the movie came out.
Wouldn’t the bat just shatter anyway? I see lots of broken bats in baseball, and batters are not seriously injured.
I haven’t been able to find any. There was a case here in Kansas City where a city snowplow ran into a mailbox which had been constructed out of…Goddess knows what, it looked like 8-inch wide-flange steel beams, and it stopped the snowplow dead and the plow blade wrapped itself partially around the box. The city made a lot of noise about how they were going to sue the homeowner, and the homeowner made a lot of noise about why was the snowplow driving up on his lawn. The news reported that police were checking to see if any ordinances were violated; I followed the story and found that the city quietly dropped the issue several months later. This was in the early 1990’s and I don’t have an electronic link.
How bored ARE these kids?
Wow…
I remember my kids pleading with us not to move to the country…now I know why.
One of my friends has a lot “out in the country” that has a chainlink fence around it with standard metal corner posts. The roads around his property are basically just gravel poured onto the bare ground, so there are no curbs or drop-offs - the gravel road just blends into the easement between road and fence.
The fence and corner pole are 10-12 feet from the “surveyed” edge of the road, as per code. Since one corner of his lot is at an intersection, people keep cutting the corner, rather than pull up a little more and make a sharper turn, so, understandably, the corner pole gets bent down or broken several times a year.
They got tired of replacing the pole and repairing the fence damage, so they took a section of 5-6 inch oil drill pipe, sunk it four feet into the ground in cement, then filled the inside of the pipe with cement. They even painted it bright red and wrapped white reflective tape around it. Their intention was purely to make a corner post that would not bend down or snap off anytime a car broadsided it.
Several times they have found the corner post scuffed, but intact, and various metal parts and even a complete car bumper laying about.
Some people complained to the small city officials about the “nuisance pole”, but because it was legally set the correct distance from the road, was on private property, and people had to be driving “off road” to hit it, they never had any official problems with the city about it.
That pole will probably suvive a nuclear strike.
My parents lived in a subdivision in the country on a corner lot. They also had problems with mailbox baseball, idjits running over the mailbox instead of just hitting it with a bat, and people cutting the corner when turning. My dad, who used to be quite handy, finally got fed up with trying to keep that mailbox in a usable condition, and made a wooden frame for the last mailbox post, and then he poured concrete into the frame, so the (steel) post was set into a concrete block which extended perhaps a foot above the ground. He said that afterwards, he’d find tracks in the yard which got within a couple of feet of the mailbox post, and then apparently the driver noticed the part of the block that was above ground, as the tracks quickly got back onto the road. For the people cutting the corner, he moved a few boulders to mark the edge of the road. A couple of people had the nerve to complain about that, and Daddy just said that he liked the look of the boulders, they were landscaping, and anyone who was bothered by them was trespassing.
He did this some years before “Stand By Me” came out.
He was careful to make it obvious that he had heavy obstacles in his yard. And he told me, when I became an adult, to never buy a house in a lowlying area (flooding) and never buy a house on a corner.
OK, so what about this: replace the mailbox with some heavily reinforced version specifically intended to resist damage (and possibly damage a batter’s car). Also, put a large sign on it stating something like “Do not attempt to damage the mailbox. It may result in injury or damage to your car.”
Dumbass kid drives by, pretends to be Albert Pujols, dislocates his shoulder and breaks his window. Would that sign be enough to legally protect you?
If it’s a wood bat, it might shatter, but the fragments will be driven back toward the hitter by the immovable mailbox in a way that they aren’t driven back by a 1/4-pound baseball.
Shattered or not, the hitter’s arm(s) will likely be hyperextended by the resulting kickback of the bat (or what’s left of it after shattering).
I recall hearing about some communities that prohibit those brick and mortar behemoth mailboxes, even if they’re attractive and indestructible, because they pose a hazard to drivers. You’re putting a large immovable mass six inches off the roadway and it could kill someone who accidentally veers into it. Sorry, no cites.
Probably overkill on your part but yeah that’s going make it pretty easy on your part to argue you had no intention of willfully deceiving potential vandals.
The only thing truly that puts anyone in jeopardy in this instance is someone intentionally setting up a situation that would cause unexpected results to would be vandals.
Swapping out your mailbox every night with a exact concrete replica because you want to watch vandals break their arms hitting it, bad idea.
Having a sturdy mailbox to protect against damage from vandals without intending them any harm pretty reasonable to most any jury.
Do they pose more of a risk to drivers than telephone poles and street lights?
I don’t know. Wasn’t my decision. But I could see them arguing that one of those huge brick mailboxes is more dangerous, and closer to the road. (Ever seen some of those things? They can be enormous and solid as a boulder. I might take my chances with the telephone pole or street light instead.)
Yes!
I drive on a 2-lane heavily traveled suburban road nearly every day, in an area full of rich old farts that drive very badly. In the back of my mind I’m always thinking what I’d do in case of a lane crosser, and I know I’d be potentially killed if I hit one of these. Better option than a head-on, but not much.
Regarding the beginnings of the vandalism: grew up in the boonies in the 60s/70s, and it was very common. And every one was mounted in cement, on a 4x4, into an old milk can.
Today they use springs.
Note that many street light poles are designed to break away when struck, rather than remain immobile.
The brick ****house mailboxes are standard in our area. Ours is about 2’ wide & 3’ deep at the base. The top is about eye level.
Somebody hit one down the street. It turns out that despite looking pretty substantial, it only had 1 or 2 courses of bricks below grade. There certainly wasn’t a building-grade footing under it. It tipped over & mostly shattered into a pile of bricks.
I never saw the car, but I’m sure the front was pretty bunged up. But no way was it like hitting a tree of the same size. Cosmetic damage, maybe an airbag deployment. But not a split-down-the-middle car & critically injured people.
How about a plastic bag of pink paint or a paint solvent taped to each side of the mail box?
That covers boxes in the right-of-way, in the “city platted proper.” So presumably their carriers walk right up to the doors to leave mail in a box on the building, or to put it through a slot. (It can’t be a pick up your own mail at the post office community, or there’d be no reason for anyone to put up a box.)
I don’t imagine anybody has a problem with receiving that level of service.
Note that this is a small town in North Dakota, where snow removal must be a big deal, and in-town mail routes are modest.
On a related note, a few years ago my sister bought a copy of Dazed and Confused and my family was sitting around watching it. When it got to the part where the kids are playing mailbox baseball, my sister started laughing real loud, but my dad just sat there looking really pissed off and asked her “You think that’s funny?” Later on when the mailbox owner catches up with and brandishes a gun at them, he said, “Good, good.”
Living out in the country, we had our mailbox knocked over more than a few times.