This is why Dad used that much concrete

[Jay 2K Winger]

I plan on getting a diesel that runs on biofuel, and rendering the fat of the dead... I wonder what kind of gas mileage I'd get out of portly businessmen?

Re-thinking my ZA vehicle plans, I think I'd get The Marauder instead.

Actually, screw ZA, I want one of those things regardless! Go ahead, try to cut me off, I dare you!

[Geek King]

Wow. Your dad is awesome, and feel free to tell him some random guy on the internet says so.

[sstabeler]

I wonder if the neighbors are thinking of getting their own similar walls now?

[DGoddessChardonnay]

It was obviously Top Gear's Toyota Hilux.

Those trucks were unstoppable. My late stepdad had a 1973, very similar to this one:
http://image.minitruckinweb.com/f/bu...ta-hilux-1.jpg

That little truck didn't need much maintenance, other than routine stuff. Don't know if it's still running but I know it was back in the early 1990's when Mom sold it.

[TheSHAD0W]

So he showed up at 8am, to do sprinklers, while I was taking photos for his homeowner's insurance dude...

Wait, you have pictures?

[Kogarashi]

Wall-zilla. Bat-wall. Wall-hammad Ali. Wall-El. The Six Million Dollar Wall.

I just want to say that I love the nicknames.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Wall-hammad Ali.

Should have been Muhammad Wall-i.

[Maria]

Should have been Muhammad Wall-i.

... I didn't even think of that! Oh well. I can't even remember why we started naming them in the first place.

Ok ok.. pictures. My dad must have deleted some photos from my camera as he copied them to his computer, but the ones that aren't missing, are still decent. Photos don't do it justice of course, but I tried.

http://s1152.photobucket.com/albums/p484/mariarene96/

The one with the car, that's the victim-car with the red paint above its tire. Wall-El is in the background. Of course the guy managed to hit the only section that didn't have re-bar for about two or three feet (he had good reason for doing that at the time, but it's no longer valid so the new wall will have it). But it still protected the property, and that's what counts. That, and that my father had a blast playing with his rented jackhammer on Monday.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

That, and that my father had a blast playing with his rented jackhammer on Monday.

And I'm sure the rest of the neighborhood did too.

That wall looks like a great idea . . . we'd do something similar but we rent our home. And I doubt the owner would go along with that level of altering the property, even if we have been here over 20 years now.

But you can bet , if I ever win the lottery and get to buy us a house out in the country, we WILL have a privacy wall on all 4 sides of our property . . . with an electric gate. Meaning anyone who wants to come in has to be buzzed in by one of us.

[Kal]

Reminds me of a hotel in the town I used to live in. It was just down the street from the cattle market (not a wide street either) and had a big frontage with carved stone pillars right to the edge of the pavement. They had to replace them about five times that I know of due to lorries knocking them and causing cracks.
The last time they were replaced with steel pillars filled with concrete which appears to have done the trick.

[TheSHAD0W]

The last time they were replaced with steel pillars filled with concrete which appears to have done the trick.

Those are called "bollards" and yes, they do the trick.

[Zaiida]

Holy cow that was one hell of a hit to take that out. Wow.

[MadMike]

Back when I was in grade school, one of my classmates lived in a house that was right in front of a "T" intersection. The family awoke in the middle of the night to a loud crash. The father thought the furnace had backfired, and went downstairs to check. When he got downstairs, he found a tractor trailer in the middle of his living room! The truck had come into town, and instead of turning left or right with the road, plowed straight ahead into the house.

As if that wasn't bad enough, a very drunk driver got out of the truck, and offered him a beer, like what had just happened was no big deal. And then, before the police could arrive, he pulled a few beers out of the truck and started chugging them. Maybe things have changed now, but back then, they couldn't arrest him because they had no way of proving he was drunk before the crash.

Fortunately, no one got hurt. Everyone was upstairs sleeping, although I think I heard that one of the family members had fallen asleep on the couch, but got awake and went upstairs. Otherwise, it could have been quite tragic. Not surprisingly, they moved out of that house shortly after the accident. The house is still there, 30-some years later, but whoever bought it after that put up a heavy concrete wall in front of the house, with a small opening where the front door us. No truck or car should be able to get through that, although they might still have to worry about an idiot on a motorcycle.

[wolfie]

As if that wasn't bad enough, a very drunk driver got out of the truck, and offered him a beer, like what had just happened was no big deal. And then, before the police could arrive, he pulled a few beers out of the truck and started chugging them. Maybe things have changed now, but back then, they couldn't arrest him because they had no way of proving he was drunk before the crash.

Don't know if it applied then, but now POSSESSION of alcohol in a commercial motor vehicle is illegal (U.S.). If that situation had happened after I got into trucking, both possibilities for what happened before the cop got there would have been offenses on the part of the driver.

Even "way back when", it would have been useful to call the company the truck belonged to (assuming it wasn't an independent O/O) and let them know that their driver who T-boned a house was drunk when he did it, and proceeded to chug a few more beers afterward.

[Kal]

Those are called "bollards" and yes, they do the trick.

Not quite, I actually did mean pillars. You know, about fifteen feet tall, two and a bit feet in diameter? Still supporting the porch but with an iron lintel welded to them across the top and buried deep enough into the ground to be virtually immoveable.
Enough to stop a cattle truck dead in its tracks as it turned out.