SALINE COUNTY, Kan. (KWCH/Gray News) — A Norwegian man attempting to rollerblade across the U.S. was killed in a hit-and-run in Kansas, officials said.
The Saline County Sheriff’s Office identified the man as 24-year-old Joachim Lanham.
Lanham was documenting his rollerblading journey across the U.S. on Instagram. According to a post from his family, he was hit by an SUV on day 22 of his journey from New York to Los Angeles
I don’t understand why people keep trying to achieve this. We have had several similar stories of people attempting cycling across the US:
It also seems that the major cause of death for American competitive cyclesports athletes are getting killed by car while training:
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/may/19/gwen-inglis-cyclist-dies-fatally-struck-colorado
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/08/sport/ethan-boyes-death-cycling/
https://www.today.com/news/magnus-white-cycling-team-killed-rcna97356
God… Like the fruit dude! Like the gad damn fruit! Orange 🍊. Dolly Parton was way not orange. But just focus on the color. You can do it. I know you probably want to meet other famous people and such. But right now we would love for you to meet with the orange guy. Cmon, please!
Fuck this sucks.
Here’s an article about him skating 5,500km across Australia:
I am too terrified to ride a bike 20km to the next town. I could probably do a quarter of it on paths. Perhaps a bit more bush bashing. But the highway sections seems like certain death. I envy places that are connected with paths. Huge respect for this guy.
FUCK CARS…especially fuck that this asshole won’t suffer anything worse than a slap on the wrist for KILLING someone.
On the other hand, isn’t an 82 year old hurtling around in 2 tons of metal with only a vague idea of what’s happening outside that box… normal?
Why single out this woman, when there are millions just like her who are only different in that thus far, by sheer luck, they haven’t happened to kill anyone? This one won the murder lottery, millions more bought a ticket.
I’m assuming you don’t drive, and hopefully you never do.
I think you’re missing the point here. The individual is not the issue. The fact that any 82 year old is hurtling around in 2 tons of metal oblivious to the world outside is the issue (or at least part of it). Do you think this woman is some kind of exceptional case?
…i don’t give a fuck if she’s 82, that just means she shouldn’t have been driving in the first place.
Of course an suv. People and their big vehicles thinking they’re untouchable and in their private house with no one looking in.
He would probably have been safer doing this in Afghanistan.
He wasn’t shot, so that’s a nice change. /s
Oof, why did I laugh at this? 'Tis America, I guess?
Remember, people who don’t live here:
Our rails are almost all shut down, public transit is a joke in all but a few small areas, roads are dangerous to bike or walk on with many not even having a shoulder let alone a reasoable place for traffic that isn’t motorized.
You slmost have to have a car here, by incredibly shitty design.
And then the cars, now…
Between the fact that nobody makes a decent car anymore, they all fall apart just about the time your lease is up so you can’t even own one only sign eternal contracts for landfill bait, all of them spy on you, and have beacons that are tracked by countless parts of our surveillence capitalism infrastructure on top of sending their own reports on you to the automaker who then sells it to anyone ad everyone, insurance is insanely expensive, and now gas is nuts, as well… And if you have a diesel?
I don’t own a car anymore, and am not in an area with passable public transit. I have one chance a week, insanely early in the morning, to catch a buss for an eight hour trip that would take one by car to get to a hub… Which doesn’t even have decent local transit for the town, but does have a meeting of interstates so you can catch other busses to other cities. At leaast those city connections run at least once a day instead of a week.
The sweet spot for cars is early 2000s, like 2005. Still analog enough to be cheap to repair but with relatively modern luxuries. Thankfully I got rid of the truck and got a car it just sips gas. An 8 hour road trip takes like $50 in gas even at around $4 per gallon.
I have one chance a week, insanely early in the morning, to catch a buss for an eight hour trip that would take one by car to get to a hub
I know what’s that like. I was carless for two years in a suburb that had an express bus into the city that you could catch one of two times in the morning and one of two times home in the afternoon. If I had to work overtime I had to beg coworkers for rides.
Being near the streetcar was a big part of why I moved where I did when I had the chance, but not everyone has that privilege these days. (And lucky me, my parents have been “borrowing” my car for two years.)
Every time I visit the US, I travel by train and bus and bicycle and walking.
This is misinformation.
This is the same kind of “I KNOW BETTER!” fuckery Europeans call American tourists out on.
Remember that the United States is larger than the entierity of Europe if you don’t count Russia, and comperable if you do.
YMMV, and I’d wager most visitors are in ideal locations more often than not, so you see the best we have to offer… Unless it’s Florida, of course.
I also spend $100 a month for internet that often caps at 100k, that’s the speed of a dial-up shotgun modem from the 90s, tell me how your gigabit fiber in your hotel is cheaper and faster because the city you are in must reflect the conditions of the entire nation.
An 82-year-old female said she had been driving a 2013 Ford Edge SUV going west on Country Club Road. She stated that she thought she hit something, turned around to check the area, but didn’t see anything, so she continued her journey home.
For some reason its normal this lady can drive. Yep, sure thing, we’d help you open a door for worry of your frailty but you can totally chuck an 8 ton hunk of metal down the road.
Getting killed by a granny that didn’t even notice the fact that she killed you and drove away home all jolly is some horror movie material.
She belongs in congress.
And if you suggest we should add public transit so that 82 year olds have a reasonable option other than driving, everyone acts like you’re ableist as if people whose disabilities make driving more dangerous don’t exist at all.
The problem with public transportation in the US is that black people will use it. That means the old white lady is going to fight paying for it and then take her own car anyway.
You’re not wrong.
one sad thing is that, as american vehicles go, a 2013 Edge is not very offensive. sure, it’s not a Corolla, but it’s not a full size
it’s a CUV with inoffensive tech. not too big, not too heavy, not too blinding or distracting. not that that saved the victim…
Yup, and in many states it’s legal for blind people to own guns.
When I hear of people like this driver, it reminds me of the quote from Coming to America: “Imagine a country so free one can throw glass in its streets.” It’s meant as a joke in the movie, but for me, it’s actually a really great way to describe our concept of freedom.
I saw a commercial where a blind veteran used those Meta spy glasses everybody hates to ask where the flag was so he could salute it.
So, “Hey Meta, where is the intruder?”
That’s such a wild mental image, I could imagine it in a movie
Aim 15° right and 5° up
Hero name: Deadeyes
Why shouldn’t blind people be allowed to own guns. Transferable machine guns have been a way better investment than bonds for essentially their entire legal existence. There are plenty of legitimate reasons blind people should be allowed to own guns.
Guns shouldn’t be investments either
Are you implying we need to be more ableist against the visually impaired?
Blindness is a spectrum not just a binary can see and can’t see.
Woke 1 is dead, no I don’t want blind people to own guns, Jesus christ.
You should really educate yourself on what it means to be legally blind.
If a legally blind Person is not allowed to own a driver’s license why should they be able to own a gun?
Arguing with Americans about guns is futile. It’s too ingrained in their culture, they grow up with it drilled into them.
I’m well aware. I don’t want legally blind people to own guns, lol.
In America, you get at least on free kill with your vehicle. Age is rather irrelevant except she waited longer than others to claim her’s.
You’re supposed to be tested when you renew your license, but the renewal period is anywhere from four to twenty-five years, with some places even longer. If you are not renewing your license they neeed an incident to reevaluate your ability to drive.
On the one hand it’s good that they have less control over locing down the ability of people to move around, especially since we have almost no rail lines, horrible public transit, and roads that are dangerous to bike or walk on.
On the other… You have to hurt someone, or damage something, in order to be told “Okay, grandpa, time to hang up the keys.”
My own grandfather is a danger on the road. He’s slowly losing his faculties, which is always tragic but doubly so because this was a deep intellectual. But trying to convince him that it’s really time to stop driving has been… a challenge, shall we say. There’s really only so much you can do in a legal sense.
If old people are going to be allowed to drive it should have to be smart cars or something, that way if they’re going to fuck around it will be them smeared 200m across the highway, not innocent victims
We allow it for the very fact that without a vehicle an 80 year old person is essentially being given a death sentence in most cities in our country.
I am all for requirements of driver’s license test be met past a certain age. But, we need to acknowledge that it’s not just that. Seniors need alternative methods of transportation. They are driving because that’s all they can do.
Whether this is basic public transportation or major expansion of senior specific door to door transport systems. We can’t just “ban them”. Because then the problem will just be a bunch of seniors just driving without a license or dying alone in their home because they didn’t get their medication that day.
Even an 80 your old person who can’t have food and drugs delivered still does not need to drive a 4000lbs SUV. There are much safer alternatives. We can quite reasonably just “ban them” from driving unnecessarily dangerous vehicles.
First, that SUV is 2 ton. That’s an easy search. You’re approaching semi-truck territory here.
Second, and I’m not siding with her as it could be false, what would you expect someone to do if they returned to a potential collision site and found nothing?
Semis, unloaded, are like five tons, minimum. I guess two tons is approaching, but then so is my sedan at like 3,400 pounds.
And as fully loaded tractor trailer is like 30 or 40 tons.
I believe cars are getting too big though.
That hypothetical would be much more convincing if it had anything to do with the actual facts of the real event that took place.
Yes, hindsight is 20/20. Unfortunately, I can’t see into the future and neither could she.
… The… Future…? What about the present? Like, seeing things on the road as you’re driving?
There’s no need to be sarcastic; I want you to be more persuasive because I completely agree with you that it is unreasonable to expect private citizens to be able to do things like: notice a full-grown man in rollerblades on the side of a highway, or notice you have collided with a rollerblader, or safely overtake a rollerblader, or notice that the rollerblader is no longer visible and is instead dying on the side of the road. People can’t do this if they are 32 or 82 – there is too much going on with their phones and their infotainment panels and the complex road conditions. You just gotta say it with your whole chest: no-one can reasonably be expected to safely operated a motor vehicle.
I’ve been to Saline County, Kansas. That’s an especially shitty place to die.
The only thing I like about Salina is their roller derby team.
Ironic.
Did this guy really get from NYC to Kansas in 22 days? Dude was haulin’ ass. That’s about 64mi/103km per day.
When I was a teenager, I once rollerbladed 25 miles in a day and my feet were very unhappy about it. The constant, violent vibrations of the asphalt make it hard not to get blisters and stuff.
I assume they have touring blades
I wouldn’t walk, roller blade, or ride a two wheel vehicle of any sort on a public road here. People will hit a parked car and say it came out of no where. We’ll give anyone a license and in some cases without a driving test.
Murica
Guess they picked the wrong country to rollerblade in /s
As someone who travels on two wheels in the US all the time, they kinda did.
Or even visit
I saw a video of a skateboarder who skates across the states the other day and all I could think is how surprised I was that he didn’t get hit/killed. Though in his montage he did get clipped
There was a Spanish actor who biked from Spain to Rome as part of some doc and he got hit pretty badly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvojIfdmSR8
In France, obviously.
