[Arthalion]

Wow, I haven't been accused of that since the Laci threads :) What I said is the truth, but it's not the entire story (the entire story could fill a small novel, and the pits intent wasn't really to dismount bike riders). The short summary is this: I wasn't just trying to stop kids from cutting through my yard. People were tearing up my property, cutting my fences, stealing items and vandalizing my vacation home, and all because I'd had the "nerve" to try and stop them from cutting across my land and to force them to ride to the proper trail entrance a mile or so up the road. The problem I had was this: How do you secure a third of a mile of road frontage to prevent people from entering your property when you're not there? Since the land is sloped and I'm uphill from the road, my eventual solution was to have the shoulder widened by cutting into the hillside, so dirtbikers today are presented with a 5 foot tall vertical cliff/cut along my property. This left them with three points of entry: the main gate, and the corners of my neighbors land (my neighbors live on their properties full time, so the bikers typically don't cut through their land). I took care of the property corners with come well placed split-rail fences and by felling some smaller trees across the heavily used trails, and hoped that the locked gate would keep people off the driveway.

Didn't work. I had 5 gates broken in two years. After the fourth gate was broken, someone entered my property and stole a LOT of equipment; two generators, my chainsaws, all of my tools...even the AC unit out of my shop window. When the sheriff's deputy came out, he advised me to figure out a way to make my driveway impassible. I did this by building what I refer to as my "tiger trap". I took my backhoe and dug a hole two feet deep, three feet long (the 3 foot deep was an exagge..rrr...typo), and 12 feet wide at a point in the road where it passes through a small cut (so people can't drive around it). The hole is concrete lined (straight sided, flat bottomed, with only a small drain at the bottom), and has hinged steel plates along one edge. When I'm home, I close the plates, covering the hole and opening the road. When I leave, I lock the plates open leaving a gaping maw in the roadway that only a Hummer could pass.

The goal of the pit wasn't to hurt people, it was to make the road impassible. The inside of the pit is painted dayglo orange to make it visible to people coming up the road, and I even had three construction cones that I put in the roadway just ahead of the hole to block cars from driving into it. There was no criminal case and no civil case because I wasn't an a**hole about it, and I took every reasonable precaution to make sure that nobody fell into the hole. That the kid ignored those precautions, damaged my property to gain access, and then blindly rode into the hole was judged to be unpreventable by me.

Now, if I'd camouflaged the hole, placed pungi sticks at the bottom, or placed land mines in the roadway, I'd agree with you. But the current state of the law says that landowners are only expected to take reasonable precautions to prevent trespassers from harming themselves on your property. The locked gate, the orange paint, and the cones were reasonable enough. Since this occurred, I've replaced the cones with a chain strung between two posts, with bright orange reflectors and a "Road Out" sign bolted to the links.

No BS. Next time I'm up there, I'll take a few photos of the thing and forward them to you :)

[Blue Jays]

Good Evening All-

Arthalion, now that's how you relate a story to win friends and influence people!

The cursory (and somewhat adversarial) explanation originally given in Post# 71 is dramatically different from this reasoned, detailed, and vindicating post.

It sounds like you have suffered at the hands of some real lowlifes. The defensive steps you've taken should pretty much ensure an intelligent, law-abiding person would not be injured. Accept my apologies as your situation hardly compares to a bunch of criminals stretching cellophane across a public roadway.

Regards,

~ Blue Jays ~

p.s. Pictures of your arrangement would be very cool attached to this discussion thread. Your "hinged steel plates" solution sounds like it could even thwart car thieves in a suburban environment...