Ignoramus5275 wrote:
On Mon, 17 Oct 2005 21:04:17 GMT, Anthony wrote:

Ignoramus5275 wrote in
news


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've deleted the original post now, but in reply...
Last I knew, willful destruction of a mailbox was still a FELONY.


yep


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.


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

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:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/c...re/4272041.stm

Chris