We should have poles like this at every street corner. Within a few weeks, maybe Maine drivers would finally learn to stop cutting corners!

He doesn’t look as big now with the new arena behind him.

Good news for the mailbox manufacturing industry. A whole bunch of people are gonna need new ones!

The drivers suck there, too. The last time I went, someone backing into the space behind my truck backed over the line and right into my rear bumper whilst I was in the store. The best part of that was the guy was in a subcompact. He could've stopped a good six feet further forward and still been in the space.

🎶 Hit me, baby, one more time! 🎶

—That pole's theme song.

So is everything else these days. If I didn't eat anything that ever came on the news because of some contamination or another, I'd die of starvation!

Nah, keep the Lindt store, too. Those chocolates are expensive, but they're also delicious and about as addictive as crack!

That pole has become a real pillar of the community in Auburn.

https://www.reddit.com/r/peopleofwalmart/comments/z35rtt/my_local_walmart_has_a_pole_in_the_parking_lot/

Nah, just let people keep running into it. It's doing the world a favor by at least temporarily taking people off the roads who probably shouldn't have driving licenses in the first place and giving wake-up calls to people who have just gotten careless.

Unusual that it happened on a right turn. Maine drivers love to cut their left turns, but they typically swing out wider than loaded Freightliner when turning right.

That's precisely the problem. They can't miss it.

Is it actually the same one, though? I seem to remember it being more to the left side of the entrance.

>You’re the one steadfastly denying that the poor design has anything to do with why so many people happen to crash into this one pole.

It absolutely is perfect! That pole is a local folk hero at this point. It's taking dangerous drivers out, one by one, making the roads (at least temporarily) safer for the rest of us, and hopefully giving them a humbling lesson they won't soon forget about paying attention to what they're doing when driving.

>I’ve said multiple times that human error is mostly to blame.

This is well beyond the ordinary types of human error that lead to typical parking lot mishaps. These people are turning left so ridiculously early that, not only are they missing the correct lane, but they're also missing the oncoming lane.

The problem is less that they don't realize where that pole is, and more that they have lost track of where the actual road is that they're supposed to be driving on. They'd be on the sidewalk or in the ditch if this were a public road instead of a parking lot! That pole is not obscured by the A-pillar blind spot at any point where it makes sense to begin turning your steering wheel to the left to go around that corner. And they're not just scraping it because they get a little too close; they're mostly smashing into it head on! That one guy even managed to flip his vehicle over. How dangerously fast must he have been going in a congested parking lot to manage that‽

I've driven through that entrance and made that very left turn many times. It's blatantly obvious what path you need to take to make that left if you have the most basic understanding of how cars steer, and have even a small amount of spatial awareness.

>Good luck on your crusade to make everyone a perfectly attentive driver. Meanwhile I’ll continue to operate in the real world.

The crusade isn't to make everyone a good driver, but to get the bad ones on the bus, or some other form of public transit, instead. Our country made a grave mistake when it built all of its infrastructure around the assumption that everyone should drive their own private cars, and its going to take generations of work to undo that foolishness.

And you sound like a person who can’t accept responsibility for your own faults and has to pass the blame off onto others.

Pay attention when you’re driving. Drive on the correct side of the road. And turn properly into the correct lane, without cutting corners. Do those things, and that pole is a non-issue.

You obviously know nothing about the responsibility that comes with operating a motor vehicle, and ensuring that you don’t endanger others around you, if you think a highly visible, stationary object that is not in any lane of travel, nor in any sensible path for a left turn down that aisle, is the problem here.

All the engineering in the world can’t fix stupid, and that’s the only thing that’s causing these crashes.

>The striped area indicates no parking, it does not designate a pedestrian zone

And why is it a no parking zone? Oh yeah, because people need access to get to the entrance. In particular, wheelchair users who are parking in the handicap spaces that are right nearby that pole.

That pole has prevented them from getting hit by people who are too damn lazy or incompetent to turn properly.

How many times have you actually been to this Walmart in question? I go there often. There is no excuse for being numb enough to hit that pole from the direction people keep hitting it. It's not a problem with the design of the parking lot. It's a state-wide (really, nation-wide) problem of giving driving licenses to people who are too incompetent to have them, because the required tests don't actually require any real demonstration of driving skill or to be able to pass.

>If you cared to notice before talking out your ass, all the yellow poles at Walmart are for signs, they are not bollards.

So they serve a dual purpose.

>It is not a bollard designed to protect pedestrians from vehicles, it would suck at that job because it keeps getting plowed over.

From the pictures I've seen, it does a wonderful job of stopping most of them dead in their tracks when they hit it. Takes their cars off the road for a bit, too, which at least temporarily increases the safety on public roads while they hitch rides with other people.

>How many commercial site plans have you reviewed or been involved with? You obviously don’t know what you’re talking about.

You know some things I do know? How not to smash my car into a bright, yellow, plainly-visible pole. I also know how to turn my car so that I end up on the correct side of the road. Auburn clearly has a problem with people who don't know these very basic driving skills, but were given licenses anyway. Their licenses should be revoked and the people involved sent back to driving school. Every single one of them turned well before there was actually any road for them to turn onto.

It's not just a minor mistake. This is an "I have never driven a car before and have no idea how steering works" level of incompetence. Engineering is not going to fix that. "Bravo!" to the pole for taking them off the roads, at least temporarily anyway.

Bullshit it doesn't protect pedestrians! That's a pedestrian only area that these dipsticks are trying to cut through, except they're being foiled by the pole. If they're not seeing that pole, then they're not seeing wheelchair users going from the handicapped spaces to the entrance either.

It's not Walmart's job to protect fools from the consequences of their own folly. It's a bright yellow pole that is easily visible to anyone who bothers to drive correctly and pay attention. They put those up in all kinds of places to stop vehicles from driving in areas where vehicles don't belong. Regular stop sign poles are not rugged enough to flip over an SUV.

Once again, the pole is not the hazard. The stupid muppets who keep running into it are the actual hazards.

The very reason for that pole’s existence is to protect the people who are not in their cars from human error.

If that pole weren’t there, these muppets would be mowing down pedestrians or crashing into parked cars.

The “hazard” in this case is not the pole. It’s nothing more than good, old-fashioned human stupidity. The people who hit it were turning so early, that you can’t even say they were aiming for the wrong side of the road. They’re not even in the intersection yet, and they’re already turning.

If this were the corner of a residential block, they’d practically be steering toward someone’s porch. If they don’t know enough to pull toward the middle of an intersection before turning their wheels for a left turn, then they need to go back to driving school. It’s not Walmart’s fault people don’t know how to drive!

I’ve gotten a real good burger at the A1 diner in Gardiner—one of the best I’ve had at a restaurant, in fact. It’s not too far out of the way if you’re driving in between Waterville and Freeport.

I’ve also had good burgers at Whipper’s in Augusta, right off of Cony Circle. Also just a minor detour if you’re en route from Waterville to Freeport.

I have a heat pump that is set to 68°. I also have an oil-fueled boiler is set to 55°.

When the outside temps drop too much below 20°, the heat pump seems to struggle to keep up, so that's when I shut it off and turn the boiler up to 65°.

Even as high as electricity is right now, the heat pump seems to be saving vs. oil. I'm expecting that I'll have to burn more oil for heat this week, though.

So they'll pay me $10 if I let them check my battery? Still not worth it to have them anywhere near my vehicle!

There’s always the catch-all “driving too fast for conditions”. Maine has a basic speed law in addition to the speed limits.

“ An operator shall operate a vehicle at a careful and prudent speed not greater than is reasonable and proper having due regard to the traffic, surface and width of the way and of other conditions then existing.”

https://www.mainelegislature.org/legis/statutes/29-a/title29-asec2074.html

That’s exactly why I always get standard transmissions in my vehicles. Last thing I want is to lose control because the computer made a stupid decision.

PSA: use them even if you have a 4×4. Four-wheel drive only helps you go. Winter tires help you go, too, but will also help you stop and turn, which are pretty darned important.

Any traction system on your car will only perform as good as the rubber on your tires allows it to.