TJ Day liked riding his bike to and from work at Walgreens. It helped him stay fit and gave him time to wind down in the evening.
He wore a reflective vest, helmet and added lights to the front and back of his bike for safety. He did everything right, said his sister Kelli Day.
Still, TJ was hit by a car on his way home from work on Feb. 18.
Another driver who found him in a snowbank on Lovers Lane near Stryker Way after the hit-and-run. That driver stayed in contact, and later offered to buy TJ a new bike. But in the meantime, supporters of TJ had already raised more than $20,000 to buy him a car.
As of Thursday, March 6, a GoFundMe Kelli organized has raised $23,427, with a goal of $28,000.
TJ has always been apprehensive about driving, but now he’s more nervous of biking, Kelli said. The generosity of his community will help him get a safe and reliable car.
I feel like everybody has the wrong takeaway here. The villagers bought him a car, which isn’t the issue here. Just because you’re inside a car during a hit and run doesn’t mean you’re not still the victim of a hit and run.
I feel like this sub has the wrong idea too. Getting back on a bike, or using public transportation doesn’t fix the issue either.
Everybody is looking at this as a car issue. This is an asshole issue. You CAN drive a car safely. Or, if you hit someone you CAN stop to make sure they’re ok.
The issue here is, somewhere out there in the city is someone who injured someone else, and then fled. The asshole is the issue. The car was simply a tool.
Arrest the asshole! (And this coming from someone who’s also anti-police for the most part)
That’s a lie, though. There’s no way to safely drive a car unless you fuck up the infrastructure for every other means of transportation, including walking.
Blaming road violence on behaviour and asking all road users to be perfect has been tried for over a century at this point.
Humans make mistakes and have behavioural problems. The proven solution is to build safer infrastructure to prevent road deaths and injuries by design.
What if driving a car has a psychological effect on drivers?
What if it’s fundamentally not possible for human beings to operate cars safely?
I mean…I feel like you’re asking hypothetical what if questions to lead towards the outcome you want. All the while neglecting the fact that those what-ifs are so far from reality that it may as well be moved from hypothetical to fiction.
IF it were true that humans were mentally incapable of driving cars, then I think cars would be banned. Now circle back to the word IF.
This isn’t a story of a mentally incompatant man hitting someone while having no control of their ability to control the car.
This is a story of a hit and run. Now even if the hit was a true accident, you stay with the injured and don’t run. But they DID run. The moment they ran, this goes from potential accident to assault.
They aren’t hypothetical. They are both, in fact, completely true. Whether or not they “run” is really not a huge consequence compared to whether or not they “hit”. Human beings are not capable of operating cars in a safe manner 100% of the time. We’ve decided that’s okay, and your “good drivers don’t kill people” mindset is a way of rationalizing away that risk so that you imagine it doesn’t concern you. It’s how we function psychologically when on one hand we know that every time we get behind the wheel someone might die, but on the other hand we really want drive-thu.