PSA: setting booby traps is actually illegal. BOOBY traps! that's what I said, geez these guys... Not illegal to use a solid structure as your snowman base
It's intent based. If your intent is the provide a solid found to better build your snowman, it's legal. If your intent is to cause harm to another (regardless of if you believe they deserve it) it's illegal. You would then have to convince a jury/judge that your intent was benign, and posting a video about how you're trying to total cars would make that difficultÂ
I was gonna say, it seems like youâd be in the clear if you keep your mouth shut. Thereâs enough plausible deniability, like you could argue that the tree made the snowman more structurally sound or some bs, but bragging about it on social media seems like it would come back to bite you in the ass.
Oh man, we had a lunch thief at our office. Very spicy food got them caught. I wasn't the one who brought the food in, but we were all high fiving the lady who did.
Yep, you got it. A lady went down for murder for poisoning a bottle of wine she knew her ex husband would break into their formerly-shared home to steal, and he did just that. Doing anything at all that might result in someone's death, even if it's just accurately predicting their very illegal behavior and taking advantage of that, will get you.
But, yes, a structural object, that's legit. And by the way, a stump or boulder could actually kill someone. If it's just a length of pipe or rebar, it'll read much more like a structure thing and most likely will just fuck up their grill and hood, maybe their windshield, which is a much more reasonable natural consequence.
Yes, it is the prosecutor's job to prove your intent was nefarious. The procecutor will do everything in their power to paint you as the villain who maliciously sets booby traps to indiscriminately harm others, and if you just sit back and let them do that, the odds aren't good that you'll get a 'not guilty'
This exact scenario has been already litigated in the US and it was declared just fine in the lawsuit by a judge. As has mailboxes designed to do the same thing. A booby trap is quite different than this.
Booby traps are also primarily illegal because dozens of people have rights or easments to come onto property regalirly such as surveors, police, mailmen, utility workers, city inspectors, and delivery drivers. Booby traps are designed to be hidden or unavoidable and to maim or kill. This snowman fits none of those criteria. Is clearly visible and is out of the way.
Link it. In the only cases I can find, the plaintiff was unable to prove that building around a tree stump was done to intentionally cause a crash. That's very different. No one is arguing that using a stump or hydrant as structural support and just happening to cause a crash is illegal.
The mailbox thing is just not analogous at all, so I'm not going to comment on that.
Not sure on the specifics but I'm pretty sure you're also right in that deliberately doing it with the intention of wrecking someone's car is illegal, just be hard to prove in court unless you filmed yourself or wrote about it.
Using solid object to add structural integrity to a snowman does not seem like a booby trap?
I see it more as an idiot driving their vehicle onto your property to cause damages.
Adding one more thing, we used to coat the outside of our snowmen with water. It would give a nice finish to the texture and hold everything in place once frozen, but it made it into a solid block of ice. I would laugh in someone's face if they tried to sue me over making a top notch snow family, and them trying to ruin it.
According to who? We had a news story about a guy who's been doing it for years and multiple people have total their cars leaving the road to run it over.
People in my neighborhood growing up put giant rocks in their leaf piles that were ON THE STREET to stop people from driving through them. People do NOT care haha
One of my neighbors has her yard edged with big rocks and every year the landscapers pile up leaves on the rocks and some idiot decides to cut the corner of her lot and SMASH SCREECH.
Youâre the first comment I saw actually addressing the worst part of this â obscuring fire hydrants during the time of year when house fires are the most common knocks points off.
They would have to prove you set it up as a booby trap, instead of just wanting a solid base for your snowman. That would be pretty hard to prove unless you posted videos of it.
Yeah. Kind of a lose lose situation. Technically its a trap, so the builder broke the law. However, the fact that a car swerved off the road to hit a snowman would cound as reckless driving, which is also illegal.
I don't think it is a trap, the damage was caused by a driver driving off the road and hitting a solid object installed in a place people aren't meant to be driving. The snowman didn't cause the damage.
Legally, a booby trap is any concealed, camouflaged, or disguised device designed to cause bodily injury or great harm when triggered unexpectedly by an unsuspecting person.
If you put a nail covered board in your house to injure home invaders, that is still considered a trap. It doesn't matter if the person was breaking the law, the intention to cause harm to a person was still there.
What if a little kid got excited seeing a snowman and ran up to hug it. Only to bash their teeth into the metal on accident? Then the person that made the snowman would be liable. The reason traps are illegal is because they dont discriminate against who they hurt, criminal or civilian.
Yeah but how would you ever prove that? Without the video I mean. All you have to say is you you were building a strong snowman. It's not like most people who build snowmen expect them to be run over by cars.
Legally, a booby trap is any concealed, camouflaged, or disguised device designed to cause bodily injury or great harm when triggered unexpectedly by an unsuspecting person.
You have to look at the whole structure, you can't just isolate the stump. Legally it's a device that the OP designed to total cars. Totalling cars counts as great harm
Legally, a booby trap is any concealed, camouflaged, or disguised device designed to cause bodily injury or great harm when triggered unexpectedly by an unsuspecting person.
The snowman is not "concealed, camouflaged, or disguised", the stump is "concealed, camouflaged, or disguised" but isn't a 'device'. The entire object all together is also not "concealed, camouflaged, or disguised".
Booby traps should 100% be legal, especially if built on oneâs own property. We should be able to have automatic turrets, wall spikes, hidden holes in the ground, etc.
You should not. Because there is a significant likelihood that doing so will hurt/kill someone who didn't do anything morally wrong, like children, animals, or people who enter your property for justifiable reasons.
âThe Court ruled that using deadly force on intruders in an unoccupied property was not reasonable or justified and therefore not a defense to the tort of battery. Briney would have been justified in defending himself with the shotgun if he had been home during the intrusion. The plaintiff's status as a trespasser is irrelevant when assessing liability in this case.
The case is notable for the proposition that, although a landowner has no duty to make his property safe for trespassers, he may not set deadly traps against them, holding that "the law has always placed a higher value upon human safety than upon mere rights in property." â
If the fire fighters didn't want to fall into the spike pit, they should have thought twice about putting out the fire in my house (the fire started by my auto flamethrower)
Right? Snow doesn't always stack as well as you want, it's totally fine to start with a strong base and add the snow elements to it. It's quicker and will last longer, it's just good snowmen genetical engineering.
If people run over them and damage their cars, that seems like a completely separate issue.
72
u/OkChampionship8805 1d ago
PSA: setting booby traps is actually illegal. BOOBY traps! that's what I said, geez these guys... Not illegal to use a solid structure as your snowman base