It's really amazing we grew up, in the "unsafe" world we grew up in, in the old days... A High school girl, just took out my mail box at work...

[Magnum Man]

I got sick of replacing it, over the years, with the high school, just down the street, & this open area drifts between our buildings, out onto the street... I think the plows think they need to get a run at the drift, but they knock my mailbox off, at least once per year... at least until I put a treated 6X6 cemented into the ground, & had my fabricator buddy custom build me a mailbox, out of welded 1/8 inch steel... it had been good the last 2 years... but yesterday it succumbed to a 17 year old girl late from lunch. going back to school... I'm honestly surprised it didn't set off her air bags... it did cost her 2 flat tires though, and even though she attempted to hit and run, she was only able to make it another half block, and was forced to call her dad, who came and told me...

this is the treated 6X6 afterwards... this is on a city street, in a 30 mph zone... curious how fast she was really going???

 

[WhistlingBadger]

Wow! I'd say even with two flat tires and a wrathful dad, she got off easy. Hat's off to dad for fessing up and hopefully making her take responsibility.

 

[GaryE]

How dare you put a mailbox in her way. Or something like that.

 

[Magnum Man]

The kids took her dads car back to school, while he waited to fill out a police report... & she got out the rest of that day, to learn what's involved in changing tires... apparently both tires were bad enough, they had to buy new ones... guessing she learned more outside of school that day, than she would have in school...

 

[GaryE]

We once had a boy in our school who arrived in his rich Dad's very expensive brand new SUV. He managed to total it before lunch, before he had left the school parking lot. He hit the cement base of a light pole at speed. We didn't have cameras on it, but it was a wonder how he managed that.
It was a small lot, and even with the acceleration you'd expect, it was a feat of incoming genius.

The principal decided not to add detentions for skipping the end of class, since he totaled the car 5 minutes before the bell...

 

[Ed Pursell]

Grew up and graduated in the 70’s.. Imagine that in my time, Dad’s vehicle, using it for school, coming back from lunch?? Ya right… I guess I’m getting too old! Is this the way it is now? I bought my own car, my own insurance, never on Dad’s time, I can tell you that.. That would be the day Pop would let me drive his car… Had to take my driver’s test with my Grandpa's car after driver ed class in school.. Any body remember driver ed in school??
Ed

 

[GaryE]

I was in a city school with no driver ed. We were a BMW crowd = bus, metro and walking.

Some of the wealthy kids had cars, but I knew no one my age who drove without borrowing a car til I was probably 18.

 

[anewbie]

I got to drive an old fury 3 to school; sadly i never had an accident as it would have been interesting in that tank.

 

[Colin_T]

This is why kids shouldn't be allowed to drive cars until they are at least 18 and preferably 21. They are 10ft tall and bullet proof. Add young stupid and inexperienced and you have dangerous drivers on the road who don't know how to drive, have poor vehicle control, and who will rush from A to B to make sure they can see their friends before class starts.

Knowing the basic road rules and being able to go, stop and indicate is not knowing how to drive. It takes a few years of being on the road to even start to know what is happening around you. Hopefully the young lady learns from her mistake and becomes a better motorist for it.

As for the mail box, make a brick and concrete one that is reinforced with 2 tons of steel. The next motorist that hits it will know they hit something because their car will stop dead in its tracks.

 

[fishorama]

I'm not sure I have any positive feedback for what happened, but our MA town snowplows took out our mailbox a couple times. I had to dig out our mail 12+ feet away & fix the mailbox too...& then they did it again!

 

[Magnum Man]

I thought a treated 6X6 - 3 feet into the ground , and cemented, would be enough for them to know they hit something, and at the speed limit, should have been enough... 6 - 8 inch lag bolts, held the mail box to the top of the post...clear to see the extensive damage to both ends... and after all, the goal, was not to kill the kids, just make the mail box durable enough, that I didn't have to fix it every couple months

 

[anewbie]

I thought a treated 6X6 - 3 feet into the ground , and cemented, would be enough for them to know they hit something, and at the speed limit, should have been enough... 6 - 8 inch lag bolts, held the mail box to the top of the post...clear to see the extensive damage to both ends... and after all, the goal, was not to kill the kids, just make the mail box durable enough, that I didn't have to fix it every couple months

The problem is the driver didn't realize that it was a treated 6x6 cemented 3 foot in the ground until they hit it I bet they know now ! Perhaps you should make it hollow and fill it with gun powder then they could get a bang out of it.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

My parents built this house in 1961. We lived in NYC at the time and this place was built as a weekend and summer place to provide a way to escape the city now and then. This is a 4 acre zoning area- every home needs at least that. There are also a number of bird sanctuaries in the area. Our driveway which services 3 homes is 1/8 of a mile long from the road to the mansion at the top. We cannot see the street from the house. Houses are spaced apart from each other.

Every Friday my parents would drive up here from the city and my brother and I came along. We had a mailbox on the street. It was not long after we were coming up here that we learned about a tradition at the local high school. As graduation approached some of the kids would pile into a car. One person would h ang out a passenger side window with a baseball bat. They would cruise that back road taking out mail boxes. My folks were a bit surprised the first weekend we came up and arrived after dark and discovered the mail box was no longer on the post.

The next morning my dad discovered the mailbox all dented in the woods and the mail scattered all over the place. So he got a new mailbox and installed it on the post. It turned out that mailbox baseball was no longer limited to graduation time but had become a year round sport. After the third time it happened, my dad did not restore the mail box, instead he went down to the local Post Office and got a PO Box. That was in 1961. For the next 52 years we received all our mail delivered to the Box.

Mom passed in Han 2013. I was the executor of the estate. When I did this for my dad in 1998 I used the PO box as the address. But in 2013 NY state no longer allowed the use of a PO Box address for estates. So, we put the mail box back up. By then the school tradition had died and was no longer an issue. But with online shopping I had an issue with Amazon. They used all forms of delivery and FedEx and UPS would not deliver to a PO Box and the Post Office would not deliver mail to our house as we had no mail box on the street. But the new mail box changed this.

So, I did my first online shopping where I had what I bough delivered to the street address. I eagerly awaited the delivery and when the Email came that it had been delivered I jumped in my car and went down to the box only to discover there was no package. I had ordered a bunch of plastic hose supplies to use for my tanks. I do not used metal hose connectors etc on my tanks. I replace metal hose ends with plastic ones.

So, I learned on that day about the newest mail issue, Our street is known for mail theft abd my package as well as one for a hose with a box before ours had also been robbed that day. Apparently the thieves would trail about 1/4 mile behind the mail truck as it made deliveries and then take whatever they wanted from the boxes.

To this day I still have the USPO Box as my mailing address. I get nothing delivered to the street mail box. Mostly what is in it is spam. my brother gets some mail there but he got his own PO Box which he also uses for his home based business.

These days all deliveries tend to be driven to the front door. We even trained the Post Office to drive them up to us rather than their bit of leaving thing on the ground under the mail box on the street. In case you all do not know this. The USPS tracking system is the worst. I usually have the package by few hours before I get the Email saying it was delivered. Amazon and others deliver to our door for the most part. But if the package will fit they may shove it into the street box. So far nothing has been stolen from the box in quite a while. But I still stick with the PO Box. It is only a few mile drive and I only bother to pick up my mail every 2-3 days.

Btw- some of the folks on this street many years ago built stone covered concrete mailbox holders where the box was encased in the top. I have a feeling if a car hit one of them the car would be in trouble and the mailbox structure would survive it. But I would bet a municipal truck mounted snow plow could take it out.

 

[Colin_T]

So, I learned on that day about the newest mail issue, Our street is known for mail theft and my package as well as one for a hose with a box before ours had also been robbed that day. Apparently the thieves would trail about 1/4 mile behind the mail truck as it made deliveries and then take whatever they wanted from the boxes.

We have the same problem in Australia with people following courier vans and stealing parcels that have been left at the front of houses. They have vehicles following the couriers as they leave the depo. The courier drops off a parcel, one vehicle stops to pick it up while another vehicle keeps following the courier.

We also have really bad mail theft here. Pretty much every house in the street has a brick and concrete mailbox, and they all have padlocks on them. Even with padlocks people still try to steal the mail. The cops catch the thieves but they are back out the next day doing it again. The worse part about the mail theft is the government departments won't send replacement ID to a post box, they only send it to a residential address. So they send it, someone steals it, I don't get it and some scumbag steals my identity with my mail they stole from my mailbox. My driver's license is dated 2016 because some prick keeps stealing the replacement ones that get sent out.