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Fortress mailboxes

I have been reading about fortress mailboxes (a topic raised here). A couple of conclusions:

  1. At least in some places, and possibly but not necessarily, near highways, fortress mailboxes may be illegal. Call your building and zoning department to find out.

  1. I doubt the morality of installing a fortress mailbox (but I am not certain). Two cases come to mind:

- a few years ago, near my old house, a car swerved off a road due to ice and was almost buried in a huge pile of snow in my yard. The teenager in it was very apologetic and I dragged his car out with my pickup. He did not have any ill intention, he was simply an inexperienced driver on an icy road.

- Last year, same thing happened in my new house, very near my mailbox. Some bad young driver hit a big pile of snow that I made, stopping inches away from my mailbox. That was during a sunny day with me in my yard. Surely it was not intentional. I would rather have him knock my mailbox down than suffer any meaningful damage. Especially since he was my neighbor.

Unless I had a repeating problem with mailbox vandalism, I would definitely not install a fortress mailbox.

If I had such a problem, I would keep a wimpy breakable mailbox, but would perhaps make the first 8-12" or so off the ground to be made of something very strong, like a large I beam or some such, to damage the vehicle, but not the occupant. Around that, I would install a fake fortress made of plastic that looks like bricks (sold as room decor at Home Depot), to make the mailbox an unattractive target.

If some vandal hits your mailbox, dies, and you lose thousands in court, you are not a winner in the situation. If an unfortunate driver dies, there would be a moral guilt element in addition to the court judgment.

i
Reply to
Ignoramus5275
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Yes, by all means strive for "bad driver friendly".

Yet, while declaiming responsibility and morality, you still seek to deceive with a car-gutting lower support and/or fake plastic bricks.

There is certainly nothing irresponsible, deceptive or immoral about making a mailbox and post that look strong because they are strong. It is no more a public hazard than a tree.

Reply to
Don Foreman

And where did *this* topic pop up from? Somebody's been reading the archived posts, sounds like.

Jim

Reply to
jim rozen

Why not go the other way, a wood 1x2 with a plastic mail box. If it gets hit...so what, nobody hurt or damage done and costs a buck to repair. I can't imagine somebody getting hurt or their car damaged by my trying to prove a point.

Reply to
Tom Gardner

Yes, indeed I would try to be bad driver friendly, especially since I still consider myself a bad driver.

I am not sure if you are seeing some immorality in having fake bricks, but if you think so, I would love to hear why that may be immoral.

If installing fortress mailboxes is illegal, then it is just plainly stupid to install a fortress mailbox. You can complain about laws all you want, but violating this law would be quite unintelligent for obvious reasons: if the mailbox is not hit, you wasted money, and if it is hit, you lose a lawsuit and lose even more money.

Installing fortress mailboxes is illegal in many towns.

Where it is not illegal, I certainly would not do it if my mailbox was not repeatedly vandalized. If it was repeatedly vandalized, I would do something that would preferably not kill the vandal.

i
Reply to
Ignoramus5275

I saw that someone mentioned a mailbox mounted on a garage door spring, it would just spring back. That was quite clever.

i
Reply to
Ignoramus5275

Add to that thought that even when the vandalism is intentional many such young punks grow out of their foolishness and become productive citizens -- sometimes above-average productive citizens. Since there's really no way of knowing when they're whacking your mailbox whether they're turds or just good kids being thoughtless and stupid you should be careful of going to any extremes.

Reply to
Tim Wescott

Ignoramus5275 wrote in news:DAS4f.2507$ snipped-for-privacy@fe05.usenetserver.com:

I've deleted the original post now, but in reply... Last I knew, willful destruction of a mailbox was still a FELONY. If it is a recurring problem, a video camera or web cam set up to snap a picture every few seconds aimed to maybe get a plate number would be a good way to go. You've lost another mailbox, but at least the people who did it can be procecuted.

Reply to
Anthony

yep

A fun Rec.Crafts.Metalworking project would be a camera actuated by an event of a mailbox being destroyed. Should not be very difficult, to use a relay that closes when signal current is interrupted.

i
Reply to
Ignoramus5275

X10 proximity detector connected to a webcam should be pretty cheap. You'd have daily pics of the postman and your wife. Hopefully not together :)

And sure as you went to this trouble, your new mailbox would remain untouched for many years.

Reply to
Rex B

I've thought about the mailbox surprise from time to time. Even though destroying a mailbox is a felony doesn't mean it's a good law or that kids who go out and whack mailboxes should pay a huge price for doing so. There are hardly any people who have not done something equally as bad and gotten away with it. That said, if my box got whacked I'd sure like to see the varmints pay. But replacing the box and maybe 1/2 a day hard labor splitting wood or pulling blackberry bushes would be just. Where I live we have episodes of crushed mailboxes. I have thought that a digital camera that takes a picture of every car that passes would be easy to set up. But destroying somebody's mailbox sure doesn't rate jail time or anything. Unless it's a mailbox in your front door and an M-80 is used. ERS

Reply to
Eric R Snow

Maybe that's the answer; carve your mailbox out of a chunk of 24" dia oak tree, buried many feet. It looks like a tree, acts like a tree. Anyone dumb enough to ram a tree deserves what my daughter got when she totaled my car on a roadside tree. The tree survived.

Reply to
Nick Hull

Has anyone built a "tupperware" mailbox. I am thinking a polyethylene with a sunlight protecting dye would be permanent and durable. I know it is not metal but in some cases... Randy

Reply to
R. Zimmerman

Rubbermaid builds a 'tupperware' mailbox...

Reply to
Emmo

If you do that, for extra fun you should buffer the last 20 seconds of video on an old PC, then if the signal is interrupted automatically save the footage to disk.

There was an experimental scheme (I can't remember where) which did this at accident blackspots. This used a microphone which picked up the noise of a collision, and then the computer would save the footage for the police.

There was also a guy who lived near me who kept having his PC stolen. Being a programmer he set up a webcam which took a picture every few seconds, and if a program detected any motion the computer would e-mail the pictures to him. He got a hilarious picture of a guy stealing his computer, which the police showed to the burglar when they arrested him. Here's the link:

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Chris

Reply to
Christopher Tidy

In England it isn't really an issue because our postmen bring the mail to the door. Only a few people have boxes on posts. But if I had a mailbox which was being regularly vandalised I'd be very tempted to build a "fortress" box. But I probably wouldn't disguise it. I'd just concrete an I-beam in the ground like that picture of Jeff's shows.

Chris

Reply to
Christopher Tidy

Yeah. The problem is that it looks more like a "Fisher-Price" mailbox. Not everyone wants something like that in front of their house.

Reply to
Jim Stewart

Some years ago this came up and one of us had a mail box mounted on a swing arm that detentes at the road. The platform is held by a pipe - drill rod I think - that was maybe 20 feet long until it turns downward into a heavy anchor.

The issue he had was snow plows - he would have to pay - school buses - he would pay - so just make one that would swing out of the way - way out of the way. Then it was easy to re-set and forget. It just takes a little yard. Move to mow...

Martin Martin Eastburn @ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net NRA LOH, NRA Life NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder

Ignoramus5275 wrote:

Reply to
Martin H. Eastburn

You have me feeling guilty now. I live on a corner acerage. I had a 2 ft high wooden retaining wall that motorists had lost control on the corner and piled into my wall...the result was me fixing the cedar clad railroad ties that was used to make up the structure of the wall. I had a young fellow slide through the intersection last fall and wrote off his dad's BMW. The kid was okay.....my retaining wall was toast due to the combination of hits and rotting wood from natural decay. Local building codes in my area forbid the use of railroad ties for residential construction now nfor enviromental reasons......so this summer I had a concrete worker come in and pull the railroad tie retaining wall....he poured twenty two 12 ft deep piles and then poured a heavy cement wall 180 feet long (lots of rebar)and also I had a brick guy put up 4 ft brick fence posts and I welded in a wrought iron fence in between the posts.... I get lots of comments from the neighbours on how beautiful it looks and I took a lot of pride in building it....It is very impressive to look at and I LOVE the looks it gives our yard I never thought of killing someone when I built it... ....so if someone slides through the same intersection and nails my newly constructed project and kills himself/herself....should I feel bad? Jim

Reply to
Jim & Lil

Bad? - yes Guilty? - no

Reply to
Jim Stewart

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