I imagine it'd be a lot cheaper and legally-viable to store your collection of electronic burglar alarms. Especially if they dial a human when triggered.
There are some neat videos out there where people make their own with Arduinos etc.
Where I live the "accidental" part doesn't really get you off the hook. Negligence is better than intention but still.
If it kills someone or causes grievous bodily harm, it's still on you. Yes, even if it's a burglar. You also have to think about the fully legal situations when it's firefighter or a cop with a warrant. Or an edge case like a stupid kid.
> If it kills someone or causes grievous bodily harm, it's still on you. Yes, even if it's a burglar.
Honestly, the laws in your locale are unjust and need to be rewritten. There should be absolutely no liability to the owner (or renter) of a property if someone burglarizing it gets hurt accidentally.
Laws against booby trapping and the like are fairly universal. Even without criminal penalties, the liability if you catch someone innocent should give you pause.
Well it kind of depends on what exactly happened. For example there are building codes, like "no deadly drops without guardrails". If you leave something like this then you are breaking the law. If somebody dies because of this then it's on you, even if they were breaking another law.
I'm not sure how you could rewrite self defense law to cover this case.
Notably though, it’s usually civil law. So someone would have to have standing to sue (typically family). And typically more
of an attractive nuisance type deal.
So it’s of the sort of thing where if someone is in your house, and falls off something and hurts themselves because of something negligent you did or whatever, then yeah they can sue for damages. Regardless of if they had your permission to be there, because you had a duty to not leave something obviously dangerous just lying there.
But it does lead to a lot of weird/unjust situations - either if the law does exist, or if it doesn’t.
It's a fun fantasy. Work a few more elements into it:
- you're hit by a bus, and your family is clearing out the storage locker.
- management is alerted to a bad smell coming out of several units, and they have to enter yours to verify that you're not accidentally storing dead raccoons.
- the police are serving a warrant on a unit, and accidentally open yours due to a typo.
- a homeless teenager just needs a place to sleep for the night.
id put a bank of ultra bright white LED lights facing the door and a speaker with a recording saying this footage has been sent to a remote location. thank you for closing the door behind you.
Edit: “You have a land mine collection?”
No, but after storage unit #2, I’d daydream about starting one.