On Tuesday, February 21, 2017 at 10:16:12 AM UTC-5, James Wilkinson Sword wrote:
On Tue, 21 Feb 2017 07:46:23 -0000, Bod wrote:

On 20/02/2017 22:12, James Wilkinson Sword wrote:
On Fri, 17 Feb 2017 15:57:12 -0000, HerHusband wrote:

Around here that would be an invitation to mail theft. Flags up, checks
are in the box.

What part of the USA is this?

Southwest Washington State, out in a rural country area.

When we first moved here we had lots of problems with mailboxes being
destroyed with drive by baseball bats. I had to replace our box 5-6
times
the first few years. I also made a pull out area for the mail carrier
and
moved the box off the road a ways. That seemed to help make it not so
convenient for the drivebys.

Thankfully, whoever was doing it grew up or was finally caught. We
haven't
had an issue in over 20 years.

Which is why in the UK we don't have boxes at all.

There's about 3 houses down our road that have mailboxes.

I didn't mean everyone, I might the normal thing is to have a letterbox in the door.

Sorry. "Don't have boxes at all" means "everyone".

I've been thinking about differences between the US
and the UK. We have millions and millions of houses with
no sidewalks between them. I wasn't able to readily
discover how many millions.

On my street (as an example), the speed limit is 72 kph,
which means most people drive 88 kph. Without sidewalks,
it's really a gamble whether a pedestrian will be mown down.

The time it takes to drive from house to house, get out
of the vehicle, walk up to the house, deliver the mail,
walk back to the vehicle and get in it, then drive to
the next house (etc.) is cost-prohibitive. Better to
drive down the street, stuff the mail in the box at
the side of the road, and proceed. It costs us about
2/3 as much to send an ordinary letter as it does you.

Plenty of people in big cities have mail slots, where
it is cost-effective (and traditional) to have them.

Just out of curiosity, I googled the population and land
mass sizes for the US and UK:

UK: 64.1 million people / 94,058 square miles
US: 318.9 million people / 3.797 million square miles

It really is very different here.

Cindy Hamilton