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
It’s no different than, say, seeing a lot of people die climbing Everest and asking why people still do that. Cause of death, and fault, are irrelevant to the reaction of “hey this is dangerous, maybe don’t do it”
The difference is that climbing Everest is inherently dangerous by nature. And there’s a ton of things being done to mitigate these dangers.
American infrastructure being dangerous is carried by its design. And yet little is being done to mitigate these issues despite the fact that we very much know how to do that.
Everest will always be dangerous. Traffic should not be.
I think there’s a big difference between cycling and climbing Everest. One is something people might do every day just to get by, and the other is an exploitative ritual carried out by the wealthy. You think these cyclists died just because they were going so far? What happened to them could have happened to anyone in that time and place on any given day. We only noticed because they were doing something noteworthy at the time. How many others died similarly but didn’t get noticed because they weren’t on a publicity stunt? Should we not care about them just because of the stunters? About all the people who have to cross any given busy street on any given day?
The cathedral of St John does an annual “blessing of the bicycles”, where they read out the names of the people killed riding bikes in nyc that year. When I went it was like 90% Hispanic names, because yeah, most of the miles and therefore most of the risk is borne by delivery people. They don’t make national press.