"Reasonable" is a courts / legal industry weasel word that allows them to kick the can down the road not defining explicit requirements, which is what creates so much of the unknowable liability. This might be fine if we were talking matters of a few thousand dollars, but when we're talking about hundreds of thousands or more, creating a game of life-altering hot potato. And ambiguity would be understandable if we were talking about equitably judging personal action vs another personal action, but what we're talking about here is personal action vs an existing situation that was entered voluntarily.
I do not see that it is "reasonable" to be responsible for any random uninformed person lackadaisically traversing my property as if it's some maintained event space they were invited into with a corresponding warranty of fitness. Yet the courts disagree, and so we're off to the races about what's "reasonable".
Do I need cones for a drainage ditch/brook that has been around for decades? Do I need cones for the 6-8" ruts due to driving through a part of my yard when it was waterlogged? Do I need cones or a fence for a tree that has half fallen down, resting on a neighboring tree, that I've yet to take down the rest of the way? Do I need cones for stumps of cut down trees? Do I need cones for items kept on the ground? Do I need warning signs about possible bees' nests in parts of structures? Do I need warning signs about the high number of ticks due to my letting the grass get halfway to a meadow? Beware of bear because it can hide in my overgrown bushes? These aren't unreasonable extremes, but actual concrete examples.
The world is an inherently unsafe place. We create structure that makes tiny slices of it "safe". Creating a general requirement that the nominal owner of a chunk of land is ambiguously responsible for making it completely safe, even for those who were uninvited, just devolves into putting up one big fence and "no trespassing" signs while hoping for the best. This is precisely what this thread is lamenting.
Also compensating out of a general fund would in no way require government inspections of private property. We're talking about extremely rare situations here, meaning this could be covered as-is in a statistical manner. In fact it already mostly is by private insurance, except when/until it isn't, with that reverse-lottery dynamic rearing its ugly head again.
(The wood pile example is because climbing on them is unsafe, yet looks fun. It's essentially the same type of attractive nuisance as a swimming pool)
> Creating a general requirement that the nominal owner of a chunk of land is ambiguously responsible for making it completely safe
I think that's at the root of your misunderstanding.
Nobody is claiming anything can be made completely safe.
But there is a such thing as reasonably safe. To take general precautions where it is possible and economically reasonable, over potential harms you are aware of, or any generally responsible person should be aware of.
And in terms of all the examples you gave, you can probably figure out what that means. And if you can't, you can ask general contractors or HOA reps etc. (if applicable) who have lots of experience.
Sorry, I do not accept this "it's so simple I'm not going to answer". If it's so straightforward to answer in general, then it should be easy for you to answer. Because what I see is a field of unknown unknowns. It would be bad enough if the bar was me knowing that a harm could happen. But rather even if I don't know, a court can just fall back to social bullying with the catch-all justification of "any generally responsible person" should have known. So despite technically not needing to make things "completely" safe, it is effectively completely because the possible conditions for which you can be held responsible for allowing is unknowable without going to court.
I don't know why you'd mention HOAs, as they're generally their own little micromanaged Hells - I'm not looking for an answer that even grass over two inches tall is unsafe because Karen might have a panic attack. And general contractors generally create LLCs and buy insurance rather than preventing all liability ahead of time. At best they react to problems that repeatedly occur in their industry. They're happy to take money to provide an illusion of complete ownership though.
I do mean all of those examples literally. Personally, I can foresee harm in all of those, and they all seem quite "economically reasonable" to mitigate. So do you just mean "yes" for all those examples? (and if so, why didn't you just say so?)
I'm obviously not happy with any of my listed sources of possible harm existing at this here fix-er-upper, hence them being in my head. Which is why I'm working on them before say having guests that I let run wild in the backyard. But it's a bit rich that such extreme responsibility is still legally inadequate because randos can just trespass uninvited (thus unsupervised and unbriefed) and then demand I pay for the results of their poor choice.
And note here I'm not trying to be callous. I have said that there are legitimate reasons for swimming pools to have fences. We're quite agreed that the well-known pattern of kid jumping into swimming pool alone and drowning is a horrible thing that should be specifically addressed. If we were only talking about specific enumerable regulations like swimming pools needing to be fenced, one could run down that list and know they've all been taken care of. What I'm taking issue with is the unknown blanket liability simply by virtue of owning property, especially when you have not held that property out as a place for others to be.
I do not see that it is "reasonable" to be responsible for any random uninformed person lackadaisically traversing my property as if it's some maintained event space they were invited into with a corresponding warranty of fitness. Yet the courts disagree, and so we're off to the races about what's "reasonable".
Do I need cones for a drainage ditch/brook that has been around for decades? Do I need cones for the 6-8" ruts due to driving through a part of my yard when it was waterlogged? Do I need cones or a fence for a tree that has half fallen down, resting on a neighboring tree, that I've yet to take down the rest of the way? Do I need cones for stumps of cut down trees? Do I need cones for items kept on the ground? Do I need warning signs about possible bees' nests in parts of structures? Do I need warning signs about the high number of ticks due to my letting the grass get halfway to a meadow? Beware of bear because it can hide in my overgrown bushes? These aren't unreasonable extremes, but actual concrete examples.
The world is an inherently unsafe place. We create structure that makes tiny slices of it "safe". Creating a general requirement that the nominal owner of a chunk of land is ambiguously responsible for making it completely safe, even for those who were uninvited, just devolves into putting up one big fence and "no trespassing" signs while hoping for the best. This is precisely what this thread is lamenting.
Also compensating out of a general fund would in no way require government inspections of private property. We're talking about extremely rare situations here, meaning this could be covered as-is in a statistical manner. In fact it already mostly is by private insurance, except when/until it isn't, with that reverse-lottery dynamic rearing its ugly head again.
(The wood pile example is because climbing on them is unsafe, yet looks fun. It's essentially the same type of attractive nuisance as a swimming pool)