Contemporary car design is so ugly.
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@caesar @futurebird
Fairly common in rural Sweden too iirc. Some villages with houses on one or two side-roads have all the mailboxes in one location, so the postman can get the whole village done with one stop -
Caesarreplied to Gurre Vildskägg last edited by [email protected]
@Gurre @futurebird In rural areas it definitely makes sense, and I see the same in Portugal out in the countryside (but more like in your photo, where the driver will probably still have to get out of their vehicle). But I've never seen it in urban or suburban areas. In the countries I've spent time in postmen in urban and suburban areas would tend to be on foot or on a bike, and walk up to the door of each house to deliver the post.
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@caesar @Gurre @futurebird I'm not saying we aren't car obsessed and that we need more urban infrastructure (because we are and we do), but the idea of making a postal worker walk my neighborhood when it's 110f/44c seems cruel and unusual.
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@caesar @Gurre @futurebird Most suburban developments in the U.S. don't have mail boxes at each house. Instead there is a lot that contains boxes where the carriers deposit the mail for all th residents. Of course, the residents all drive there since the developer couldn't be bothered to install expensive sidewalks.
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@StumpyTheMutt @Gurre @futurebird oh no!
But also, yes, the lack of 'sidewalks' ('pavements' for us) was the other thing that stood out to me from that image. Totally bizarre to me. It's as if it never occurred to the developers that someone might even walk down the street to visit their neighbours. -
@VampiresAndRobots @Gurre @futurebird that's fair. And I can honestly see the sense in it, it must save a lot of time, but it's just something I'd never thought about before. (I'd also worry about the post getting stolen, but that's another topic...)
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Karl Auerbachreplied to Gurre Vildskägg last edited by
@Gurre @caesar @futurebird The US Post Office seems to be requiring, or at least significantly encouraging, the use of standardized, multiple recipient, delivery points. It makes mail delivery much more efficient and perhaps more secure.
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@karlauerbach @Gurre @caesar @futurebird this works for rural mail, where everyone knows each other. it's a disaster for suburban and urban mail. people leave junk mail everywhere, mailboxes get broken into cause they're not on anyone's property and the keys for the mailboxes are easy to hack, snow gets shoveled into a bank that happens to be where the mailbox is so no one is getting mail at all. my grandmother was a victim of identity theft because of that type of mailbox, and she could no longer access it because of her age and health, where she previously just had to walk to the mailbox on her garage. they are an ableist nightmare.
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@crashglasshouses @Gurre @caesar @futurebird I am here in California where snow is kind of a fable in most of the state (and in the rest, wow - Tahoe can get 800 inches of snow a year!)
(It's 60 steps (!!) from the bottom to the top of our house, so a few steps to our mailbox isn't, for us, much of an issue.)
We have had mail stolen out of our non-locking traditional end-of-driveway mailbox. The thief took checks we were mailing - he acid washed 'em and re-wrote (and re-signed!) them to "Cash" and tried to cash them at the bank - the bank, of course, refused. Stupid crook.
Around here essentially every new build of multiple houses ends up with a multi-delivery box on the street. Only the single-family, separated houses get individual boxes any more.
(Trash pickup is similarly consolidated in some instances.)
Yeah, I wish the post office would do more to not carry that awful junk mail. I guess they make $$ from it. But ours tends to end up in the recycling bin before it ever enters the house.
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@karlauerbach @Gurre @caesar @futurebird
mail theft happens. idk what one does about that other than abolish capitalism. it is possible to get a mailbox that locks. in canada, where we mostly have mailboxes next to our front doors, it still happens. even in neighbourhoods with larger distances between houses.
but the thing is, when the mailboxes are all in one giant block of mail boxes, then a thief can steal the *whole neighbourhood's mail* instead of just yours.
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@crashglasshouses @karlauerbach @Gurre @futurebird in the UK mail usually goes through a letterbox mounted in your front door. To steal it the thief would have to break into your house.