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Freeway guardrails are now a favorite target of thieves
- kjkjadksj 1y agoSo much theft going on for metals. Many streetlights get robbed for their copper wire. The new 6th street bridge in LA gets routinely stripped of wires. Most of the older bridges have been robbed of their old brass lamps already. Many brass plaques in parks or on infrastructure has been stolen. What is interesting is that this has been ramping up just in the last couple of years. Some of the brass has been out in public for decades but is only now getting stolen hand over fist. I wonder what the impetus has been these days that wasn’t there in the past?
- christhecaribou 1y agoIs brass more expensive than it used to be?
- sparrish 1y agoYes. Copper (major component of brass) is seeing all-time highs at around $4.60 lb.
- DougN7 1y agoI had assumed it was much higher. How many pounds of copper could be in the wiring of a street lamp? 5 pounds?
- chasd00 1y agoEnough to get high, in Dallas the drug houses take copper and other metal as payment. No need to make the trip to the junk yard.
- magicalist 1y agoSource? I can't find any. It would seem like sitting on a large inventory of scrap metal would be a dumb way to run a "drug house".
- dylan604 1y agoSome local plugs are closer to fences as they will take pretty much anything of value. Recently heard of someone taking a high end bottle of cologne or expensive bottles of wine. Whether the plug enjoys the product themselves or is able to turn them around somewhere else is more information than I want to know.
- quickthrowman 1y agoIf you get lucky you can pull out hundreds of feet of wire, the wire is in conduit that goes from pole to pole and it’s usually decent sized wire to account for voltage drop. The city where I live is using aluminum wire for streetlights now after having miles and miles of copper stolen.
- toasterlovin 1y ago$4.60 is not an all time high for copper. Copper has been around this price for a while. It’s traded within about a 10% band for the last year. It had some fluctuations prior to that, but there hasn’t been any kind of long extended run up in price.
- staplung 1y agoPresumably multi-causal (economic desperation, rising metal costs, perception that the crime won't be punished, getting the idea from others, etc.) but at least one component is probably the rise of high-powered, battery-operated tools. Battery tools are so much better today than they were even 10 years ago. In the picture from the article you can see the guy using a battery-powered reciprocating saw. Not long ago, an approach like that wouldn't have been feasible.
- toomuchtodo 1y agoTo your point, you can get a Stihl Cutquik TSA 230 Cordless Cut-Off Saw for ~$500-600, and this will make quick work of anything getting in the way of scraping. I've cut through thick steel with it like its butter (and the only portable way to go faster is something like a plasma torch, depending on material and thickness). https://www.stihlusa.com/products/cut-off-machines/battery-cut-off-machine/tsa230/ https://www.stihlusa.com/products/cut-off-machines/battery-c... (no affiliation, I just like the tool)
- Sevii 1y agoWhile that is a great saw. Metal thieves are likely using harbor freight angle grinders and sawzalls costing well under $200.
- prasadjoglekar 1y agoThey're probably using stolen goods to begin with. This is in CA. IIRC, there was no penalty for thefts of <$1000 until recently.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- buildsjets 1y agoI helped cut off the tail cone of a Boeing 747 (former United tail #882) using of those at the Tupelo MS boneyard a few years ago. Well, actually I drew a sharpie line and said “cut here” and someone did. There’s a pic of the result of our handiwork on Airliners.net, I have much cooler and closer pictures with sparks flying and non-OSHA approved crane rigging being employed that I unfortunately cannot share, but yes, hot knife through butter described it. https://www.airliners.net/photo/Untitled-United-Airlines/Boeing-747-422/7116763 https://www.airliners.net/photo/Untitled-United-Airlines/Boe...
- murderfs 1y ago> I wonder what the impetus has been these days that wasn’t there in the past? Fentanyl and cheap battery powered tools
- kjkjadksj 1y agoNot a lot of fentanyl use in CA, it's mostly meth use. Dremels and Sawzalls are nothing new.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dv_dt 1y agoIm wondering of regulatory enforcement on the metals dealers has gone down. The last time Southern California had problems like this they added required identification and thumbprints for any seller at the dealers. Presumably there have been workarounds since that allow stolen metals to be moved
- unethical_ban 1y agoSocial media hyping it? Stupid kids get an idea? I'm speculating.
- FireBeyond 1y agoIn my area, we've taken to replacing brass hydrant fixtures with hardened resin covers and such, because they were constantly being stolen. And as much as that is an issue in itself, gotta love the scrap metal dealers who see someone show up with a shopping trolley full of brass hydrant covers and "sure, no problem here".
- SlowTao 1y agoDemand is up and supply is increasingly getting more costly. Ripe conditions for this kind of behavior. When it comes to a lot of metals it is kind of amazing how some of the biggest mines of this stuff are some of the oldest. It makes sense as we go for the low hanging fruit first and they are the biggest deposits. Alas, as an aggregate, the ratio of overburden on mining has been going up for almost a century now and it is starting to catch up in some materials. Copper, nickle being a big two. Iron... not so much. So far we have managed to 'Red queen' ourselves out of the situation by throwing massive amount of resources (mostly energy), but one does wonder what happens if we even hit an energy plateau. Many have speculated, most are wrong, time will tell.
- krunck 1y agoIn my trips to Bulgaria in the early 2000's I saw rampant metal theft. It got so bad that sidewalks had open 8 foot holes to utility spaces because someone tool the access doors. The problem has improved a lot over the years. Also: I try to always separate any metals from our household trash stream that would not be accepted by the municipal recycling program. I store it up in a box and put it on the curb when it's full.(usually just aluminum, iron, and steel.) It disappears within 12 hours every time. I wish more people would do the same.
- cut3 1y agoWe have alleys where I am in the US and I sort out all the things thst could be useful and leave them in the alley and they all get picked up by folks before the day is over
- stevage 1y agoThe annoying thing around here is people cutting off the cords from otherwise functional electrical appliances for the tiny scrap value.
- neilv 1y agoAs a poor-student-ish activity in a US college town, I used to systematically walk trash pickup zones of the city streets the night before the zone's pickup, looking for useful household items that people customarily set beside their trash bags for some poor student type to grab. Occasionally, it would look like some scavenger had come along before me, and cut the connectors off computer cables, and took only the cable. Not even cut the cable off an appliance to which it was attached, but simply a cable with connectors on both ends. For example, one time it was for a complete vintage Mac setup, which someone had taken some care to set out with all the required items... but the cables were missing; only their cut-off connectors were there. One time, I actually saw a/the person doing this. He looked just like a comfortable gray-haired engineer, calmly standing on the sidewalk with a heavy wire cutter, snipping the connectors off a computer cable someone had set out on the curb. I was so surprised, that I didn't say anything to him.
- tragiclos 1y agoDoesn't sound very profitable: >Over the last two years, the state transportation agency has spent more than $62,000 on repairs related to guardrail theft in the region. If the full cost of replacement is ~$31k/yr, the scrap value of the stolen guardrails is surely far less. Seems like there wouldn't be enough for even a single thief to make a living.
- ndileas 1y agoPeople willing and able to do this probably have a few things going on at a time. Plus they're not necessarily at the high end of living expenses. A couple grand haul for a couple hours work is pretty good.
- petsfed 1y agoCost to repair correctly is almost always a lot higher than the fence value of the material, but more importantly, repair cost is always higher than the labor/tool cost to steal the material. Dunno how long it takes to cut off a 12 foot section of guard rail, but the fence value of that rail only has to be more than $15/hr over the time it takes to find and remove the rail to make it profitable. Its the same thing with catalytic converters. The crackhead stealing a catalytic converter from a 2011 prius is interested in the $150-$350 of platinum in the catalytic converter, not the $2200+labor replacement cost of the thing. Considering that its ~20 minutes looking, and ~2 minutes sawing to steal the thing, we should all be so lucky as to make $150-$350 for less than 30 minutes' work.
- pixl97 1y agoPortable electric power tools, which are likely stolen themselves, can make quick work of almost anything. Only thing that stops even more theft is the tools themselves will get pawned for drug money quick enough.
- notherhack 1y agoIs that really how cat theft works- thief gets a couple hundred and it’s smuggled offshore and broken up for raw materials to make new cats? Why can’t the thief sell to a local shop for $1000, to repair maybe the very car it was stolen from? Are cats serialized and tracked? When I was in Central America people would steal windshields from cars left outside at night. New replacements were very expensive because of import taxes but you could just go to the nearest shady shop and what do you know, they just happen to have a used one for your car in stock!
- daoboy 1y agoIn my little corner of heaven we get meth heads tying grappling chains to their trucks in order to yank down live power lines to sell for the copper. I have no idea how none of them have died yet, as frequently as this seems to occur.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- stavros 1y agoHow do you know they haven't?
- daoboy 1y agoFair enough. I supposed it would be in the local headlines, but I frequently tune out from the news for long stretches of time.
- pixl97 1y agoBack when watchpeopledie was a subreddit you could catch a clip of this type making a fatal mistake.
- SoftTalker 1y agoThese are people who just disappear. Nobody reports them missing because nobody cares.
- badpun 1y agoAlcoholics in Poland steal live train and tram traction. Once in a while, they die.
- chasd00 1y agowait until it becomes widely known how much copper is in one of those EV super chargers. Although witnessing a bug zapper effect may deter some thieves.
- helge9210 1y agoDon't try to catch thieves. Go for the scrapyards/recycling companies buying the metal.
- AmVess 1y agoThat's all there is to it. All these scum know they are buying stolen items, but they do it anyway. Same thing for catalytic converters and copper stolen from just about anywhere. Drop long prison sentences and massive fines on these people, and this problem would vanish in short order.
- squigz 1y agoYou honestly believe a scrapyard owner should go to jail for buying metal that might be stolen? Fines, sure. But "long prison sentences"? > this problem would vanish in short order. Anyway that's worked well for drug abuse/sales, so it should probably work here too
- unethical_ban 1y agoOnce pharmacies and drug manufacturers in the American legal system started getting held liable for excessive opioid prescriptions and pushing, it became less common. So yeah. It might work. Same with pawn shops.
- squigz 1y ago> Same with pawn shops. Isn't America experiencing absurd amounts of petty theft right now? Maybe pawn shops are no longer in the equation (doubtful, though. Any data on this?) but did it actually help alleviate the problem? As for the opioid crisis... well, I don't want to open up that can of worms.
- brookst 1y agoCriminal charges generally require proving intent. It's very hard to prove what somebody knew. What you can do is make it illegal to buy particular materials, and then the intent to break that law becomes obvious.
- fooker 1y agoPrime third world country behavior. (And yes, I’m from a third world country lol)
- sharpy 1y agoOnce upon a time, a colleague from South Africa told me that they use fiber cable everywhere. I was surprised by this that they seem to be more advanced than us. Turns out that copper wire gets stolen, so they have no choice...
- vorpalhex 1y agoThere's an old network admin adage that if you ever need a backhoe to show up, all you need to do is bury some fiber optic cable. Soon enough a backhoe will magically appear to sever your buried fiber. This trick works great if you ever get lost. They say a master network admin always carries 6ft of fiber optic just for this reason.
- itronitron 1y agoIn my experience, you can easily find any buried telecom cable as long as you dig several feet away from the marked utility lines.
- c2247946 1y ago[dead]
- esseph 1y ago"Backhoe fade"
- bregma 1y agoPlenty of stories about yahoos hitching their pickup to a telephone repeater box around where I live to pull the copper cable only to find it's fibre. You can't beat stupid.
- 1y ago
- mannykannot 1y agoI'm surprised the guardrails are aluminum rather than galvanized steel.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mrexroad 1y agoYeah, I’m rather surprised rather they’re AL. Related: I recently had a few hundred lbs of clean galvanized steel to dispose of and looked into selling to scrap yard. I would have spent more on gas, one way, taking it up there than I’d have gotten for it. Luckily my local recycling yard (2-3mi away) was happy to take it for free. Ironically, I also took a few half-full trash bags of AL cans and got ~$35 for them.
- m463 1y agoThe cans are artificially inflated by the deposit fee at the cash register when you buy them. so more deposit than recycling for metal.
- BizarroLand 1y agoThey're intended to save lives by slowing down a car careening out of control or bouncing it out of oncoming traffic at least. Galvanized steel would increase the hazard by having a higher likelihood of piercing through the shell of the vehicle and striking the passengers than the softer and more bendy aluminum would. It also corrodes over time, so barring an accident aluminum despite its higher initial cost is a better choice of material for guardrails. Tradeoff is that they would need to make the fines for recyclers so onerous that they would knowingly never accept guardrail material since the only truly effective deterrent is removing the profit motive.
- potato3732842 1y agoGalvanized steel is used the world over. It's a simple engineering exercise to interchange one for the other. Steel has some superior properties with regard to tearing/bending so you can actually make "softer" barriers out of it if that's what you're going for.
- msarrel 1y agoReminds me of when I used to work in Newark New Jersey. The cobblestone streets were pried up with crowbars and the cobblestones were sold. The old buildings had all of the plumbing ripped out so it could be sold. The new buildings had all of the wires ripped out so it could be sold.
- tossandthrow 1y agoAh yes, the great benefits of rampant inequality
- MiiMe19 1y ago[flagged]
- noelwelsh 1y agoThe value provided by the infrastructure greatly exceeds the value of selling it as scrap. If it seems worthwhile to an individual to, effectively, turn dollars into pennies a reasonable explanation is that none of those dollars come to them.
- dylan604 1y agoYou have a strange way of looking at this. From those doing the theft, it is pennies from nothing. It's not like they are spending money on anything. The tools being used are at best borrowed, but most likely stolen. So they only expense would be their time, and that's nothing especially if it's going to get them medicine so they aren't sick for however short time those pennies earned gets them.
- noelwelsh 1y ago> it is pennies from nothing It is only pennies from nothing if the thief derives no benefit from the infrastructure. I don't, say, dig up a copper cable if that cable provides the Internet access I rely on to run my business or talk to my friends. The next obvious question to ask is why the thief doesn't benefit from the infrastructure, and the systemic answer is inequality. That's literally what inequality means: unequal access to resources and opportunities. Using your medicine example, it's unequal access to medicine that drives the crime.
- dylan604 1y ago> I don't, say, dig up a copper cable if that cable provides the Internet access I rely on to run my business or talk to my friends. That’s the reason you’re going with? Not that you’re not a junkie and have decent paying job that makes this a money losing proposition for you because you are on the positive side of the inequality equation compared to a junkie?
- IshKebab 1y agoThey're made from aluminium??!
- mk89 1y agoWhere I grew up it was not that uncommon from time to time to experience no trains for weeks because of power lines theft. Insane the fact that people can just somehow cut such thick long cables without getting fried - just like that.
- hunter2_ 1y agoSame idea as birds not getting fried on uninsulated overhead lines, I reckon. Depending on voltage, shoes on the earth wouldn't be nearly as good as a huge air gap, but maybe a tall fiberglass ladder is decent.
- liendolucas 1y agoIn Argentina is common to steal high voltage cable lines. On one occasion a young man attemping to do so received a discharge that literally changed his skin color and pulverized his clothes. He was able to survive only a few hours as it turned out most of his organs suffered severe burns. People wouldn't believe that after that he was still able to walk and talk normally until emergency services arrived.
- kuschku 1y ago> he was still able to walk and talk normally until emergency services arrived. While I know that's not what you meant, it sounds like he was fine until emergency services decided to teach him a lesson ;)
- noelwelsh 1y agoOne person digging for copper took the whole of Armenia offline: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/06/georgian-woman-cuts-web-access https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/06/georgian-woman... This is how you turn dollars into pennies. It suggests society is a bit broken if this seems a worthwhile thing to do.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoLike Russia and the fall of the Soviet Union when people stole power lines. Sure, big cities have problems in bad economic times with metal theft, but when every crook is out to steal catalytic converters from cars at people's homes, that's pretty bad. Macroeconomic and microeconomic cannibalism are further signs of a trend towards decay and decline. Oh and school shootings and mass shootings. And a lack of functional, universal healthcare. It will take far more, like the garbage not being picked up, for major reforms, but it will also take a charismatic leader really on the side of the ordinary people for that to manifest. Another "FDR".
- greesil 1y agoOr just have a police state. Problem solved.
- mycall 1y agoDoesn't work, it just makes corruption more probable.
- chillingeffect 1y agoLaws dont say what can't happen. They say what the people who are allowed to break laws are allowed to do. It's called norm asymmetry.
- gdbsjjdn 1y agoImpossible to tell if this is satire
- egypturnash 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- tracker1 1y agos/live/buy recreational illegal narcotics/
- chowells 1y agoWhy do you think buying recreational narcotics isn't desperation to live?
- influx 1y ago[flagged]
- geraneum 1y agoIs being desperate to buy drugs a new thing? Because it sounds like stealing these guardrails is new thing.
- bluGill 1y agoWhat makes you think it is desperation as opposed to just thril seeking.
- Freak_NL 1y agoThis year there were multiple reports of people stealing bronze sculptures from graves here in the Netherlands. Thinks butterflies, birds, and other personal memorabilia. That's a fairly new development (and a new low). Small sculptures in public parks already were the occasional target. Railroad wiring is a common target too of course. Guardrails seem to be immune here though.
- allenu 1y agoSimilarly, in Seattle, a bronze statue was sawed off at the base and stolen about a year ago: https://southseattleemerald.org/news/2024/08/01/healing-hate-a-community-event-mourning-the-theft-of-seattles-sadako-peace-statue https://southseattleemerald.org/news/2024/08/01/healing-hate...
- hirsin 1y agoWe also had yet another delay on the new light rail line because the power lines were stolen... Twice, in a week. https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/copper-wire-theft-light-rail-service-disruption-redmond/281-14bafb92-070a-4a31-a1f6-0f2e61451d17 https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/copper-wire-theft-l...
- daveidol 1y agoDamn junkies man
- shawn_w 1y agoDon't forget the bronze gates at the Arboretum: https://www.historylink.org/File/22556 https://www.historylink.org/File/22556 (though that happened in 2020).
- throwaway173738 1y agoAs long as they leave Lenin alone, I guess.
- genewitch 1y agowhy would Dutch people steal graveyard statuettes? Are things that bad in Holland right now?
- Razengan 1y agoI still remember a Reddit post, maybe a decade ago, about sewer manhole covers with fancy art in a Japanese town. One of the top comments was: "This would get stolen in [American city] in 1 day."
- kragen 1y agoYou stole Freenode. Give it back.
- stuaxo 1y agoMake less of the wealth in society belong to the very very few and this wont happen as much.
- MaxikCZ 1y agoThis is not an issue for those very very few, no-one is stealing their jets.
- mhh__ 1y agoI think this is more about institutional collapse. What's the mechanism by which I see jeff bezos and then want to go and rob someone? Keeping in mind that the typical criminal is a moron who literally can't understand delayed consequences
- OKRainbowKid 1y agoThe mechanism is that society/state is structured in a way to allow them to extract ever more money from regular people, with their social/financial/medical security and general govt services like education deteriorating further and further, creating more desperate, disillusioned, disenfranchised people, some of which steal copper. Properly tax rich people (again), make politicians act in good faith again, actually care for regular people, and things will improve.
- potato3732842 1y agoThe institutions are collapsing because people don't identify with them because they serve their own interests (which has a lot of alignment with moneyed interests) rather than the people's interests.
- mips_avatar 1y agoOne problem with west africa is they desperately need better roads but whenever a foreign country/NGO comes in and builds a road the locals dig out the gravel and it collapses.
- dotancohen 1y ago[flagged]
- waffleiron 1y agoUnlike some other groups, that just get their rockets directly donated.
- toss1 1y ago[flagged]
- elihu 1y agoYou might be thinking about Gaza, where Hamas released a video of them digging up a water pipe and using it to make rockets. The Telegraph released an article about how the EU is worried that Hamas might dig up EU-funded water lines to make rockets: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/10/10/eu-funded-water-pipelines-hamas-rockets/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/10/10/eu-funded-... This turned into something of an internet meme, with people claiming that Hamas was destroying their own critical water infrastructure to make rockets. Apparently the actual pipe that was dug up in the video was originally installed by Israelis to supply water to an Israeli settlement, long since abandoned. It wasn't actually being used, and there were no prospects for it being used again any time soon.
- dyauspitr 1y ago[flagged]
- mips_avatar 1y agoThere's also some like pretty practical stuff they could do, like actually create a great west african airline (to get from neighboring countries in west africa you need to usually travel via dubai or europe). Ethiopia is a pretty horrible government but Ethiopian airlines makes eastern africa function in a way no other African airline has.
- Lammy 1y agoJournalists are willing this to happen more by reporting on it.
- avidiax 1y agoYou think that scrap metal thieves read their news? That they are also so stupid that the idea of stealing metal has never occurred to them?
- Lammy 1y agoDon't put words in my mouth. You're the one assuming that, not me. People are broke, not illiterate, and articles like this just publicize that a certain high-value metal is available in a certain place that many wouldn't have considered on their own.
- rpcope1 1y agoSomething that isn't said or asked is what scrapyards are accepting these. For catalytic converters, most yards are supposed to measures in place to deter accepting stolen cats. Someone has to be seeing loads of things like statues or guardrails coming in by someone who almost certainly doesn't own them (and probably looks like it). There's financial incentive to accept anything and everything that comes in, but there needs to be more aggressive measures to punish yards that are unscrupulous and end up accepting stolen goods without a fight.
- onestay42 1y ago[flagged]
- debo_ 1y agoThis is intensely pedantic.
- tomhow 1y agoPlease don't complain about tangential annoyances... They're too common to be interesting. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- onestay42 1y agoI'm sorry! I'm quite new here, so I guess I don't have the rules internalized. Thank you for the reminder.
- nilespotter 1y ago> Congress has cut federal funding for public media — a $3.4 million loss for LAist Why the fuck was "LAist" getting federal funding? Glad they're not anymore.
- schlauerfox 1y agoLAist went out of business and the local public radio station bought it and kept it going, it's a great public service. https://laist.com/shows/airtalk/kpcc-will-now-be-known-as-laist-89-3-heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-rebrand https://laist.com/shows/airtalk/kpcc-will-now-be-known-as-la...
- lawlessone 1y agoi've never thought of this before, that poverty makes other things more expensive.
- jopsen 1y agoYeah, paying people to not be poor is actually not a bad idea. It's really sad some people can't find employment more gainful than scrapping highway guardrails.
- rogerthis 1y agoYou are becoming Brazil (brazilian here).
- _mu 1y agoBrazil is the end state
- wewewedxfgdf 1y agoThe symbolism of thieves stealing our guardrails!
- JKCalhoun 1y agoWith cordless tools from Chi…, I mean Harbor Freight.
- tgbugs 1y agoI think about this every single time I drive by a stretch of road that has these. You can't have public goods when the value of those goods in private hands is greater than the risk of, ahrm, converting those public goods into private goods. When a society fails to provide sufficient opportunity for all its members then those who have been left behind can simply make up the difference by retrieving their share of the common wealth by other means. The cost of trying to police this (ignoring entirely the moral and ethical implications of such policing) at the scale of e.g. all roads with guardrails is more than the value if replacing the rails, and likely substantially more than just providing the missing opportunity and removing the sources of wealth inequality that make wealth redistribution in the form of guard rails an inevitability.
- OccamsMirror 1y agoBut the police are paid for with the taxation of normal people, not the ultra wealthy class. Which is who would need to be taxed to redistribute wealth and opportunity. Our politicians have zero interest in properly taxing themselves and their friends. So easier to just keep taxing the middle and over funding policing.
- 1oooqooq 1y agoyou got so close...
- potato3732842 1y agoThe degree to which the line between the state and moneyed individuals and interests blurs as they converge near the top confuses a lot of people.
- stevage 1y ago> Nearly 470 sections of guardrailing were stolen in the last fiscal year alone in L.A. and Ventura counties, costing the state transportation agency $17,000 to replace, the agency said. This implies that the total value to the thieves is pretty tiny. Actually hang on...that must be an error. Do they mean $17,000 each? That seems too high, but $36 each seems way too low.
- potato3732842 1y agoCop math, aka lying. It's like when they say they found a bajillion bucks of coke by lying and projecting wholesale quantity of coke down to what it would retail for as nickle bags of crack. Literally every stat institution does this sort of math slight of hand by default in situations like this. They're probably using the most unfavorable triple OT, gotta close a lane, lots of people involved assumptions for labor rate. I'd try to give them the benefit of the doubt and say they're quoting the base material cost but that math don't math. $36 probably only just barely covers a 6ft section of 6" I beam pounded into the ground for guardrail and certainly wouldn't cover a section of guard rail let alone a 3"+ pipe of steel say nothing of aluminum
- AnotherGoodName 1y agoCast aluminum is 47cents per pound (~$1/kilo). https://sgt-scrap.com/todays-prices/ https://sgt-scrap.com/todays-prices/ This is likely less than minimum wage for huge amounts of property damage.
- shawn_w 1y agoEnough for the next hit of meth or fentanyl, which is all they care about.
- GartzenDeHaes 1y agoJust like during the collapse of the Soviet Union.
- m-hodges 1y agoThere was a somewhat viral photo of people stealing an entire Albuquerque street light.¹ ¹ https://www.reddit.com/r/Albuquerque/comments/1fakprt/watched_these_people_steal_a_light_pole_off_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Albuquerque/comments/1fakprt/watche...
- potato3732842 1y agoLook at the bottom. That's a discarded light post. The arm and light at the top has been removed and it was broken off by the bottom. The construction crew likely left it where it was and these guys came along. There's one in the woods near me that I keep meaning to grab but I don't really have a use for aa tapered pole and it's kinked pretty high up so....
- more_corn 1y agoPeople who steal safety equipment should be summarily executed.
- randomNumber7 1y agoWhy do they steal metal instead of sitting peacefully at home eating cake?
- m463 1y agoI remember reading that some policemen set up a recycling center, and basically 100% of the metal taken in was stolen in some way. https://www.wired.com/2008/01/drugs-guns-remo/ https://www.wired.com/2008/01/drugs-guns-remo/ ""Of the 278 people who came in to the store, only two people had (items) from a legitimate source,"
- kristianp 1y agoThese guardrails are made of Aluminium. In my country guardrails are mostly made of steel or at least iron, which is mauch harder to cut and lower value.
- esbranson 1y agoAnd the solution is rather easy, if draconian: absolute liability, sky-high civil penalties, and enforcement by private individuals (a la "qui tam" or the Texas Heartbeat Act). Let the average person (read: lawyer) sue the scrap yards into oblivion, and make it lucrative enough that the thieves themselves will turn them in. Fight greed with greed, it works. For those people who think it's being sent across the border: secure the border.
- jgdxno 1y ago[dead]
- ikekkdcjkfke 1y agoThats QE for you