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Originally Posted by J_9

Judy, wouldn't this be a case of Open & Obvious? By that I mean that the pole is out in the open and it is painted orange so as to attract attention.

I had a case once where a person tripped over a rather large crack in the sidewalk, the crack, although she did not see it, was considered open and obvious.

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Right, that's it - you can call it open and obvious (which it is sometimes called), "what would a prudent person do/notice." And a large crack in the sidewalk is pretty much the same thing - 200 people a day walk into a Post Office. One person hits the crack and falls. All the other prudent persons noticed -

And these slip and fall cases (cracks in sidewalk) have become very, very difficult to win, at least in NYS because a lot of the insurance companies are hinging their arguments on this "prudent person" theory.

I'm by no means saying I agree - I think OP may think I'm being difficult - I'm just telling it like I see it, like I work it, what I see. The average person probably sees two, maybe three, slip and fall accidents, maybe one or two people who sideswipe a mailbox, whatever, in a lifetime. I see probably two or three a week.

The number of dog bites and kids on bikes hit by cars is probably four times that.

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Originally Posted by gubbymj

the pole is actually painteed RED to match the exterior of the restaurant...it's NOT ORANGE...but on my vehicle, it shows up as orange.

IT was NOT visible to me WHATSOEVER. If it was, there would be no way I would hit the dang thing. I have NEVER been in any kind of accident or had any damage done to my vehicle, before, and consider myself to be very attentive...but the pole WAS NOT VISIBLE!
The drive-thru is VERY narrow...you do have to make a sharp turn to the right to avoid hitting the building, once you leave the drive thru. It just happens that I didn't see the pole and my Ford Windstar mini van does not turn on a dime...

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Doesn't this put some of the blame on the driver? If you can see that the drive-thru is narrow, and you drive a large vehicle with a not-small turning radius, wouldn't a prudent person think that it might be safer to go inside and order, or, if you do go through the drive-thru, at least be aware that you need to use caution because of the narrowness? I drive a small little car, and there are some drive-thrus that I just don't use because of how they interact with my car (mostly that getting within arm's reach of the windows means getting way too close to the wall).