Freeway guardrails are now a favorite target of thieves
120 comments
·September 5, 2025noelwelsh
burnt-resistor
Like 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".
rpcope1
Something 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.
Freak_NL
This 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
Similarly, 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...
hirsin
We 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-l...
krunck
In 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
We 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
mmmlinux
Hopefully they aren't just picking out the good bits and dumping the remainder of the box somewhere else.
Freak_NL
Nah. Any sorting won't be done until they've finished their rounds. People who gather metal from street side dumps just cart it all to the nearest scrap metal dealer. Most is aluminium and steel anyway; both recycle just fine.
daoboy
In 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.
techjamie
They do that here with the ISP wires and it takes out internet and cell service all over the county and beyond for usually two days straight each time. All the providers here run off the same infrastructure, so the only people with internet are those with satellite internet when it happens. I started driving in a direction to see how long it would take me cell service during it once and I had to drive about 40 miles.
At its peak it was happening every single month, but slowed after it started catching press.
dylan604
Not just meth heads, but junkies too. Only around here, they climb the poles to cut the cables. Unfortunately for all involved, they are cutting the fiber lines so not only do customers loose signal, the junkies don't actually get any copper.
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stavros
How do you know they haven't?
daoboy
Fair enough. I supposed it would be in the local headlines, but I frequently tune out from the news for long stretches of time.
badpun
Alcoholics in Poland steal live train and tram traction. Once in a while, they die.
chasd00
wait 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.
Kirby64
The unfortunate thing (for deterring theft at least) is that the actual DC cabling is going to be unenergized for safety reasons unless you’re actually charging. Copper theft on those charger plugs is already happening.
jerlam
I'm told that many (if not most) chargers in Europe are Bring Your Own Cable. I don't know if that's for compatibility or for theft reasons, but it makes sense.
cyberax
It's already widely known. Here in Seattle all the outdoor HVDC chargers are now down, with the cables cut.
hunter2_
Would we be able to insulate sufficiently for a new generation of DC fast charging where voltage is so much higher that current is so much lower that the cable isn't thick enough to be worth stealing? Could eliminate active cable cooling, as well.
I guess the problem would be stepping it back down inside the car to match the battery voltage, which is an AC endeavor, at which point it might as well just be AC grid power delivered to the car (albeit high/primary voltage, not residential/secondary voltage), and we're back to the car having enormous equipment on board that ought to be stationed, so no.
tragiclos
Doesn'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.
tcdent
People that steal almost anything off the street aren't making a successful career out of it, they're addicts.
A second hand iPhone is only worth a few tens of dollars on the black market, but that's enough for the next hit.
petsfed
Cost 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.
ndileas
People 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.
D-Coder
Well, they're freelancers, so they probably have another half-dozen things going on.
kjkjadksj
Your cost of living is pretty low if you live in a nylon tent
stuaxo
Make less of the wealth in society belong to the very very few and this wont happen as much.
mhh__
I 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
MaxikCZ
This is not an issue for those very very few, no-one is stealing their jets.
mannykannot
I'm surprised the guardrails are aluminum rather than galvanized steel.
mrexroad
Yeah, 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.
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msarrel
Reminds 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.
liendolucas
In 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.
mips_avatar
One 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
Didn't some group dig up their donated water supply system to make rockets out of the pipes?
elihu
You 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-...
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.
waffleiron
Unlike some other groups, that just get their rockets directly donated.
toss1
That was Hamas, digging up donated pipes supplying water to the Gaza residents to turn into rockets to fire on Israeli civilians. They are so proud of it they made a recruiting video [0].
[0] excerpted here as a brief documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCBFnhEX8j8
dyauspitr
Sub Saharan Africa will never improve unless the have a leader that is authoritarian, truly benevolent and capable. Those countries need a good king to whip them into shape before anything resembling democracy can be introduced at a later time when the countries are in a stable state.
mips_avatar
There'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.
mk89
Where 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_
Same 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.
One person digging for copper took the whole of Armenia offline:
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.