So, yeah. That just happened.
Oh no, how did that happen!?
Had to run the Wyze Recorded Video thru a converter\compressor app so the Forum was happy with them.
Probably drunk. Swerving for a pink flying elephant crossing the road.
Oops! Sorry for your mailbox. If someone did that to mine, they would not be leaving the scene - lots of rebar and concrete.
It looks intentional to me. They touched their brakes even before they went off the road (brake lights come on). Then they let off the brakes again (Brake lights go off), then touched the brakes again (brake lights come back on) just as they went off the road, but not only enough to feel comfortably in control
First touching brakes way before going off the road
Maintains it for a while before going off-road:
Then lets off the brakes again just as they go offroad:
Then shortly after that they lightly press the brakes a little again to maintain control up until they hit the mailbox, and then their instinct wasn’t to hit the brakes harder like most people’s instinct would be in a collision event, it was to immediately let off the brakes and keep going.
That all leads me to believe hitting the mailbox was the intended goal. They slowed down a little to maintain control, but didn’t jerk the wheel or brake very much at all, and then when they had a collision they let off the brake so they could speed up again. That is all contrary to normal driving instinct. I think it’s intentional vandalism.
On my street to the left is a blind hill with a straightaway leading up to it. Cars FLY over the crest regularly and get an OH $#!+ surprise when they realize they can’t make the downhill and slight right curve at that speed. I have nearly been clobbered trying to pull into my drive.
The PD just put up “Your Speed Is” radar signs two weeks ago because of the speed issues.
This one was either impaired, on their phone insta chat booking, or totally baked (like so many ignorant morons who do that), overcompensated the braking which pulls to the right, and couldn’t handle it.
That was one consideration when I put it up. But I opted for the cheapest one I could find because I predicted this day.
What I didn’t know was that this mailbox was engineered by NASA with breakaway sheer pin bolts at critical stress joints and bouncy steel. The base stayed in the ground, it pulled the posts (2) off of the base and sheered the bolts, and knocked the box off the top mount, sheering the bolts. To be honest, they were only like 5\16 soft steel screws and nuts, not bolts. The mailbox only had a bent flag.
So, I consulted the OSI and Steve Austin, put it back together with cyborg technology new bolts, and will be putting it back up tomorrow.
That makes sense. Now, knowing the extra context I agree.
Here’s a nighttime photo of the brick column with the mailbox. If I remember right it’s 34 inches front to back and about 18 side to side and stands a little under four feet tall (not including the light). On the inside of the brick is around four inches or so of poured concrete with 10 pieces of vertical rebar and a ring of rebar every three brick courses. Every other course of brick has Tapcon screws into the brick with tie wire tying the brick to the rebar. The footing is about the same depth as the above ground height and is wider at the bottom then at ground level. It ain’t going anywhere without a LOT of force.
And there’s a Wyze V2 in the back of the mailbox.
Fire Hydrants have special hollow sheer bolts in them also. It seems like every week where I live there is a Hydrant getting launched to the moon like your poor mail box.
Highway signs have them also so the wind just sheers the bolts and they fall over when hurricanes come ashore.
Here in Wisconsin (and I think most northern states), all 4x4 wood sign posts on highways have a 2 inch hole bored through at close to ground level. So when they get hit by a car or snowplow, they break right off and reduce the damage to the offending vehicle. I think even the guardrail posts have those holes.
All the mailboxes I remember from Wisconsin are on a 10 foot arm reaching out to the road with cow catcher bars on the side. The mount is slid over a post in the ground with springs in each side so that when the snow plow hits it it swivels out of the way and then the spring bounces it back in place.
Something similar to this but built like a tank:
I want to do a couple very short chain link fence runs with the posts that slide into ground-embedded metal sleeves and bolted (because ‘removable.’)
But I’m not very talented so I’m gonna have to back up a ways and get a running start…
I noticed as I was walking around that some of the street info signs around here are mounted thusly…
(grammar be damned, I’m not fixing it. )
I want to prevent hooligans from ‘wilding’ down a long run between our property and the next (from street to alley.)
You all should support me in this by ing the comment as many times as possible.
Wow, that’s a heavy duty mailbox!
Reminds me of the video of someone trying to hit a snowman with their car, but didn’t realize it was built on a massive tree stump… the owners returned and saw tire marks and the exposed stump in the front of the snowman
There are two of the brick columns that will have a walkway between them:
Years ago near where I grew up in Altadena, Calif. there was a T intersection where the vertical part of the T was a steep downhill. People regularly would not be able to stop in time. After several times of cars hitting the house across the street, the homeowner built a short concrete block wall. By the time the next car missed the stop, the ivy had grown over it so you could hardly see the wall. As the fire department is extracting the driver from the car, the fire captain is talking to the homeowner, and says something like “I remember being out here before. What did you build that wall out of?”. The answer was that it’s just a standard concrete block wall, but the footing was several feet deep, something like 10 feet wide and there was railroad rail in every vertical core of the wall.
Wall: 1
Car: 0
Guess he saw a ghost at the last minute and tried to avoid it. lol
But he did wayyyyyyy more damage to that truck than the mailbox.
One of my neighbors from a few doors down came by to tell me she saw it happen and to give me a description of the truck. Turns out she was backing out of her driveway and saw it. The truck was locking it up because she was backing out of her driveway into the street in front of the truck… who was going well in excess of the speed limit.
White truck with some dings on the front right and custom black paint stripes on the dents.
thats hilarious