Not for the public to drive on though.
Putting up a wall to hit instead of the side of the house would be one hell of a stretch for depraved indifference.
It’s kind of hard to follow without multi-quoting, but my post was in response to this exchange:
I repeat that IANAL, so my opinion is worth every penny you’re paying for it, but as I (think I) understand it:
You’re entitled to park your car in the driveway because that’s what your driveway’s for, and presumably your driveway was constructed in accordance with local regulations and building ordinances.
That doesn’t mean you’re entitled to put a big honking boulder right at the edge of your property with no setback and no margin between the boulder and the shoulder (which looks to be the only place these homeowners could put a big honking boulder). Putting big objects right next to the road tends to be hazardous for drivers, which is why local laws usually don’t allow it.
Or are you asking whether the homeowners could get away with putting a car-sized boulder actually in their driveway instead of parking their car there? I don’t know the answer to that, but evidently it isn’t what they want to do. They want to go on parking the car in the driveway and put a boulder on the edge of the property in front of their house.
Putting up a wall right on the edge of the road with no regard for zoning requirements relating to setback, OTOH, sounds like it could be a slam dunk for depraved indifference.
Similarly, I’m probably allowed to walk around on my own deserted porch or front yard in a portable cage of pointy spikes if I want to. It’s taking that act out on the sidewalk where bicyclists are apt to get seriously hurt if they run into me—even if it’s their own irresponsible fault that they ran into me—that can get me in trouble.
A lot of people seem to have a lot of trouble letting go of the preconception “I can do WHATEVER I want WHEREVER I like with my own property and/or person, and if anybody else runs afoul of that it’s THEIR OWN FAULT for invading my space”. No, that’s not quite how it works.
You’re expected to exercise some generally agreed-upon level of caution for the well-being even of people who are inadvertently or just plain recklessly invading your space, even though their intrusion may be illegal. This is why the law pays especial attention to what you’re doing on the edges of your space, where other people are more likely to inadvertently trespass on it.
My town had a similar situation. They installed a gaurd rail, with reflective arrow stickers on it. FWIW.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure I answered this in post 12 too.
Signed,
Claude Rains
You did. I have no idea why so many people continue to be so insistent that homeowners in the abstract should be entitled to put whatever they want on their own property wherever they want to put it, and it’s up to everybody else just to stay off the property.
Surely anybody who’s actually dealt with setback requirements and other zoning laws regulating buildings and their surroundings is well aware that that’s just not the way it works in real life.
It brings me back to something I’ve already said. I can name several local government buildings that are near roadways and are protected by large bollards. These bollards would violate the setback requirement of virtually any privately owned structure, and serve no purpose other than to provide maximum stopping power against an oncoming vehicle.
I can also name many businesses in my area that have concrete pillars or etc in parking lots or in store fronts, sometimes literally touching the road. It isn’t the most common thing ever, but if your search your recollections you can probably imagine a few businesses you’ve seen like this.
I agree in general, most places it is not going to be legal to move an enormous boulder to your property line. But there are obviously legal scenarios under which you can have extremely dangerous (to traffic) barriers right at the property line.
Well, if they’re in violation of local ordinances, something should definitely be done about that. I’m guessing, though, that different types of zoning areas have different types of requirements about property line setback.
You can get variances for most zoning ordinances, I’ve had to go before zoning boards regularly. I’m sure any government building gets a rubber stamped exception for pretty much anything they want.
But yeah, I think that based on my direct observations you can legally get permission to put obstructions at the property line. That’s not saying it’s okay to roll a huge boulder out onto your front lawn abutting the property line next to a busy roadway, of course. But it’s also not true that you can’t erect dangerous barriers at your property line–lots of properties have them and many of them prominent enough it is highly unlikely local ordinance officials would be unaware of them.
YES, putting really big ass rocks in your front yard can be a good thing!
I had some boulders put in the front yard to keep the town snowplows from plowing snow into our front yard-
pic- http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v704/barrettscary/rocks1.jpg
A guy fell asleep and drifted onto our yard doing 50. He hit a boulder and moved it very far-
pic- http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v704/barrettscary/aboveview.jpg
It moved his car over enough to miss our house and hit the very old retaining wall where he stopped-
pic- http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v704/barrettscary/HPIM3900.jpg
another- http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v704/barrettscary/HPIM3901.jpg
So his hitting the boulder made him not hit our house. The local police were fine with that. And I have since added another 2 boulders.
And this is what happens when a snowplow hits a 1,000 pound rock. It may roll a few inches, but that’s better than an 8 foot snowbank plowed against our front windows, 20 feet over our front lawn.
pic- http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v704/barrettscary/HPIM3896.jpg
here’s another pic- http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v704/barrettscary/HPIM3890.jpg
So basically we had permission from the town, and when something did happen the police didn’t give us any shit. They all agreed it’s our property, and we have the right to put rocks out to protect us. They said it was no different than a wooden fence, as long as it was far enough away from the middle of the roadway, which we made sure to measure to be legal. And rock beats wood any day. And rocks are cheaper than repairing my old house, so I’ll take the chance of a lawsuit that what I did was dangerous to somebody who drove off the pavement and hit a rock instead of my house.
In other words, you were complying with local setback requirements, so legally you’re just fine.
I do not think anybody here is arguing that there’s anything wrong or legally iffy with putting a boulder on your own property if it complies with local setback requirements.
What some of us keep trying to explain despite the fact that it appears to be a surprisingly tough point to get across is that there can be situations where putting a boulder on your own property CAN get you in trouble legally because it DOESN’T comply with local setback requirements.
Interesting.
For the first several years when we first moved into our present house in 1975, we kept having speeding cars lose control and hit the tree in our front yard. We became concerned because our young children often played in the front yard. So we had a series of bollards installed in front of our yard. These consisted of 10" diameter cement posts about 3’ high with rebar in the center. I planted boxwood hedges between these posts. There is now a full grown hedge totally hiding these posts. I never considered that we might be liable if someone smashed their car into our hedge.
FYI, our house is in a typical, rectangular subdivision. one house away from the corner.
Oddly, we never had anyone else lose control and hit the barricade after we put it up.
In tort law, and in most states, the only duty a landowner owes to a trespasser (and since trespassing is strict liability, these cars are trespassing) is not to be willful, wanton, or reckless.
Maybe a jury of other people would disagree with me, but putting a big ass honking BOULDER in front of your house with the express purpose of allowing cars to crash into it seems to be textbook willful, wanton, and reckless.
The house or the car, as others have said, are there for the purposes of living and driving, respectively. The sole purpose of the boulder is to injure.
Most people incorrectly assume that since it is their property and others don’t belong there anyways that they can put bamboo shoots and land mines in the front yard. Not the case.
I don’t know, but hell that house is close to the road. Who builds a house where the stoop ends on the road’s shoulder? When I lived in NYC my door was further back from the street than this.
It’s not like these cars are driving across his lawn, they’re basically flying right into his driveway. Can you put a guardrail across the driveway? And how the hell do you get driving so fast on a windy little road that ends in a stop sign?
Honestly, I only see two options, build something on the stoop, like a strong railing or low wall, and have the town put some serious “slow your ass down” measures on that idiotic bridge.
There’s a house the next town over that has me shaking my head in a similar way. My car is 14’ long, and definitely couldn’t park in front of their house without hanging out in the road a few feet; a road that is curvy and has people driving off it on a regular basis for speeding. I am astonished that no one has hit the corner of their porch yet. Why on earth would anyone decide building houses this close to the road is a good idea??
As I skimmed this thread, I realized that there was a hell of a lot of opinion and very little in the way of hard fact. The OP asked a factual question and got a lot of conjecture.
I’ve noticed this a lot in PA. When you go across the border from NY it’s as if lawns magically vanish.
A boulder set in the road is intended to injure. A boulder set between the road and a house that’s been hit by cars 4 times is there to be between the reckless driver and the stationary house that was built properly according to code and zoning laws.
But Hari’s right. We need some lawyers in here.