This is turning into a GD. Some I’m just going to say the letter of the law says one thing, but I disagree with its allotment of responsibility, and call it good. 
If the sign is built sturdily enough, you could do without the boulder entirely.
Of course, the sign would have to read: “Warning: Sign”, and that might be too meta for some municipal jurisdictions to tolerate.
That’s it!
A big, honking, sturdy sign that says “Warning! Boulder!”, that will stop an out of control tank, to protect the house, and a 50 pound boulder that won’t even hurt a tiny Reliant Robin if it hits it.
You gotta be careful about those Reliant Robins. I saw a documentary* on TV where one of them rocketed straight up into the sky**. You’d need a pretty tall sign to stop that.
- An episode of Top Gear
** A few hundred feet into the sky, before falling to the Earth and exploding.
Boob traps are illegal because EMS personell who may be required to enter the property in a crisis can be injured by them. I cant think of any emergent situation that requires a piece of fire apparatus to ram a house.
Your rhetoric sounds more like there is a tripwire triggered catapult to throw rocks at motorists who may enter the yard. A boulder has no motive, it does not project force in any meaningful way, it just exists. It does not trap a car, it is not “designed” to cause injury any more than a brick wall or a row of trees. As long as setbacks are maintained a rock, brick planter or BBQ, a wall/fence of any material erected for privacy that otherwise complies with local building ordinances.
It is no more designed to kill than the car smashing into the house…shall we charge all of those people with attempted murder?
So, if an aged operator parks the wrong direction in violation of town ordinances, spends the evening watching the Super Bowl, maybe has a couple pops, leaves, walks (stumbles?) back to his illegally parked car, past the obvious rocks marking the neighbor’s private property, then proceeds to drive his vehicle on the wrong side of the road, make an illegal K turn and backs into one of the rocks during the maneuver, that operator is more than 50% responsible for incident and therefore the property owner (of the rocks) is not negligent. Just so ya know, K 
Maybe ol’ Dad should cut down on the pops, or hang up his spurs. Additionally, the hostess of the Super Bowl party has no cause for action, that’s for Dad to decide. But the neighbors might, and the hostess might have some exposure, especially if she was serving the pops!
I’d totally forgotten about this. I guess sometimes zombies are cool! (Though clammy.) If the situation was ever resolved, it doesn’t seem to have been newsworthy. Does anyone know the Schenewolfs personally? Did they get their boulder, or did they just give up and cede their home to errant drivers?
Here is the Sept 2013 Google Street View
That house was probably built long before the road was there. I can’t imagine any city zoning that would allow it as it is; it must be grandfathered in.
A boulder can’t be used, too obvious a danger. And really no room to put it there. They could possibly build a sturdy wall around that front patio for looks & safety (but I still wouldn’t sit out there).
But neither of these would protect the driveway & garage, which is where the car hit. And a guardrail wouldn’t work either; it would block them from ever getting a car out of their garage. Same with any concrete barriers or bollards.
A good solid railing along the center line of that road would protect them halfway – cars speeding over the bridge couldn’t cross the road and hit their house. (And they could only go one direction when exiting or entering their garage.) Also, that doesn’t protect them from cars on their side of the road (though that doesn’t seem to have been a problem).
The real solution is for that house to go away. The city should either buy them out, or pay them to relocate the house further back on their property (there looks to be plenty of room). The neighboring houses are all set much further back from that road. This seems like such an obvious solution that there are likely other factors involved. Probably the owners don’t want to sell, or the city doesn’t want to pay their price, or both.
Look at the map instead of the streetview. What appears to be property lines are very odd. The property the house sits on seems to be about a 50 by 80 foot area chopped out of the middle of the lot for the house behind it. And the house is set in corner of it, actually straddling what would appear to be the roadway easement line. Agreed - it was probably a situation where something was grandfathered in. Perhaps an earlier homeowner agreed to sell the person who built the house the little chunk out of their front yard, leaving a strip on either side for driveway access. Maybe the house was originally an outbuilding that was sold to somebody with a small amount of land to go with it. Either way, the house itself is a road hazard. Unfortunately, I would guess that eminent domain proceedings to acquire the property and pay the owners fair market value so that the house could be razed may be way too expensive.
I reckon it was the other way around. That house was there before any of the others and they sold some of their back yard as a building plot (or maybe built it for a relative). It certainly looks older and more substantial than the others. The road was probably a track when it was built.
Sounds reasonable, although I suspect you have the ‘grandfathered’ part backwards. More likely, city zoning caused the distance problem via eminent domain. My grandparents had a nice front porch. Which they used for storage since it was rather noisy and unsafe to use as a porch. It was originally well away from the road, back when the road was one lane each way. Then the city wanted to widen the road to four or five lanes. Eminent domain forced my gps to sell the front yard right up to the porch steps. Now a semi going by can rattle your teeth.
As far as protection, from my observation the modern standard is various flavors of breakaway/crushable/bendy barriers. Cities might have used boulders back when the cars were super-rigid steel, gas was leaded, and all the children were above average.
Are the bollards on government property there primarily for accidents, or to prevent car bombs? I hope these owners don’t have to worry about cars hitting the house and exploding.
The satellite picture, as opposed to the street view picture, appears to show some kind of structure on the far side of the parking area which may be a solid wall, and which wasn’t there in September 2013. Maybe that was an alternative to the boulder.
That’s amusing, the way that wall/structure appears and disappears when you zoom in and out.
I located the property on Zillow and the home was built in 1900, so almost certainly before the road. It was last sold in 1998.
I couldn’t find any additional reports of accidents at the address, however, there was an article from back in 1993 when someone robbed a local bank then fled when police arrived. Once they drove over the bridge (across from the house) they exited the vehicle then fired two shots at the police. The suspect was found hiding behind a shed on the property.
That house seems to be cursed.
Well, they put up anti-terrorist barriers dont they? They are specifically designed to stop trucks, etc from hitting building.
But I think that isse may be the stated purpose.
“I am putting out some nice landscaping including a attractive boulder.”
“I am putting this boulder here so that people hit it.”
I’ve been wondering: how about if you commission a huge ‘modern artwork’ that happens to be carved out of granite?
It seems to me the simplest option would be to put a highway barrier guard rail all the way along the front of their property. Deeply embedded posts (like bollards) are probably more effective with less volume or weight than a sitting boulder.
Then because their driveway access is blocked, turn the garage sideways (or backward) and use the neighbour’s driveway to exit or enter. Any misguided vehicles will instead go zooming into the trees by the neighbour’s driveway. If necessary put guardrail on the other side of that driveway also, with just one driveway gap, so cars going along the road don’t manage to get on the wrong side of the house’s guardrail.
Which then brings up the question of whether the neighbor can get difficult about them using the right-of-way that he owns. Perhaps the city would have to eminent-domain the first 20 feet of driveway. (Odds are the neighbours own that thin strip of driveway because every parcel of land must have access to public roads. )
I don’t recall ever seeing speed bumps or the like on a bridge. Is that legal? Maybe it’s just rare.
I agree the town should buy the house. If the house is hit again and one of the owners dies, the lawsuit will be for more than a fair price for the house.
One thing the article doesn’t include is feedback from the drivers who’ve hit the house. You just know that at some point, one of them will sue, whether or not it’s their fault.
?Feedback 
?
“Ugly paint job, so I had to destroy the house for world peace.”
“Crash was unusually bumpy. Three stars.”
“The boulder was magnetized.”