united-states liability property
Are booby-traps illegal if they don&#39;t harm humans?
<p>I saw this image today:</p>

<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/MgoPc.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/MgoPc.jpg" alt="4chan post on Facebook"></a>
[![4chan post][2]][2]</p>

<p>For the sake of this question, let's assume it happened in the front yard of the poster's house (so on his property)</p>

<p>If this really did happen, would this be considered a booby trap, because the nails served no purpose other than to destroy the property of people driving over the sign?</p>

<p>Would this trap be illegal, even though there's no way that it would reasonably hurt another human (if you're outside, you have shoes on, protecting you from the nails). </p>

<p>You cannot booby trap your property, see <a href="https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/3970/can-i-booby-trap-my-property-against-police?noredirect=1&amp;lq=1">Can I booby-trap my property against police?</a></p>

<p>You can, however, protect your property in any reasonable way that will not cause harm to innocent trespassers. So things like fences with <em>obvious</em> barbed wire, road spikes that would damage tires but not people etc. From the images it <em>seems</em> like the nature of the spikes are such that they would injure someone who stepped on or fell on them and probably cross the line into booby trap territory.</p>
