Coaches - PLEASE remind your athletes that unfortunate things like this can happen. It's next to impossible to plan for all incidents that can happen - but share this story and teach defensive running.
Coaches - PLEASE remind your athletes that unfortunate things like this can happen. It's next to impossible to plan for all incidents that can happen - but share this story and teach defensive running.
Not sure exactly what you're supposed to do to defend yourself from a drunk, homicidal man in a truck intentional ramming your team at high speed on a wide street in a 25 MPH school zone.
ummm... wrote:
Not sure exactly what you're supposed to do to defend yourself from a drunk, homicidal man in a truck intentional ramming your team at high speed on a wide street in a 25 MPH school zone.
Drive your middle and distance runners to a park to run.
It's called victim blaming and stories like this and those involving cyclists bring out tons of it. At least runners get spared the *important reminder* to always wear a helmet, you know, in case a drunk homicidal driver decides to point their pickup truck at you.
At least the driver has been apprehended. Sometimes they get away with it.
Where does it say he 'intentionally' rammed his truck into the runners?
Sad, Frustrated Coach wrote:
Coaches - PLEASE remind your athletes that unfortunate things like this can happen. It's next to impossible to plan for all incidents that can happen - but share this story and teach defensive running.
https://www.weau.com/content/news/1-killed-5-injured-when-driver-hits-Okla-high-school-student-athletes-567546561.html
If this kind of thing happened while I was coaching high schoolers, I would immediately have to retire. This is devastating and it would crush me. I couldn't even imagine how that coach must feel right now. Some people are probably going to make comments trying to find answers but the main point here is that it can happen to anybody and coaches have to preach safety to their athletes. I'm sure this coach did so but you can't account for everything that can happen on the road.
A second student has died.
This article also adds the detail that the runners were actually on the sidewalk when they were run down, not in the road or crossing the road.
Students run over on the sidewalk; other vehicles struck before and after the driver hit the students; driver's own son had been killed in a traffic incident just the day before.
This was not an accident and not something that the victims could have avoided by defensive running.
This obviously wasn't an accident and I'm not sure what the students were supposed to do when they were run down by a driver going well over the speed limit.
By what I have read there seems to be little the students could have done and the act seems to fall into the category of second degree murder. Truly terrifying; and I hope he is prosecuted to the full extent as to deter this kind of behavior because I am at a loss as to what else could have been done.
But I think the OPs point is as runners our safety has to be on our mind when on and near roads, and we should always be aware and defensive. While this may have been unavoidable there are plenty of examples of accidents that were caused by negligent drivers, but were avoidable by the runner.
Is this when we call congress to ban alcohol, ban vehicles, or make it illegal to combine the two?
On a more serious note, this really makes me mad. Luckily these things don't happen as often as they potentially could, but it'd be so much better if there were more bike paths and running paths completely separated from road ways.
This is a really bizarre story. The truck driver definitely ran them over in PURPOSE. And the article mentions the driver/murderers son was killed in an accident within the same week. Maybe he went psycho after his son died? No excuse, he needs to be charged with murder and locked up forever.
This hits home to me, especially the part about the the runners being on the sidewalk.
Freak accident like that happened to my sister when she was running on the sidewalk in HS. Man driving on wrong side of the road hit a car and spun out to hit her.
She’s fine now, but this article reminds me we could have lost her that day.
I hope the dude who hit other cars and runners gets the book thrown at him.
From the NY Times:
"Four of the students who were struck by the pickup were set to sign cross-country scholarships for college on Wednesday,"
White terrorism if you define terrorism as killing strangers for some sadistic reason. Things like this happen but we are banning fefugees from Myanmar? Some school systems do not allow athletes to run on the roads to prevent accidents though in this case they were on the sidewalk and it was intentional. He hit many cars and.kept going.
Gwalkerruns wrote:
White terrorism if you define terrorism as killing strangers for some sadistic reason. Things like this happen but we are banning fefugees from Myanmar? Some school systems do not allow athletes to run on the roads to prevent accidents though in this case they were on the sidewalk and it was intentional. He hit many cars and.kept going.
This post is terrorism if you define terrorism as nonsensical gibberish.
This is horrible (the situation and the post) wrote:
Gwalkerruns wrote:
White terrorism if you define terrorism as killing strangers for some sadistic reason. Things like this happen but we are banning fefugees from Myanmar? Some school systems do not allow athletes to run on the roads to prevent accidents though in this case they were on the sidewalk and it was intentional. He hit many cars and.kept going.
This post is terrorism if you define terrorism as nonsensical gibberish.
The problem with this post is not that it is nonsensensical gibberish, it is in fact quite logical- but it starts with an incorrect premise. We don’t define terrorism as killing strangers for a sadistic reason- under that definition, there is no difference between Ted Bundy and Osama Bin Ladin. Terrorism is inspiring fear to cause political change. This guy appears to have deliberately these kids because he was mad about his own kid being killed. More Bundy than Bin Laden.
Accident is not the right word.
Sounds intentional. This man should spend the rest of his life behind bars.
Does anyone know if they were facing traffic or not? I know this might not have mattered and that they were up on the sidewalk so believe me I am not trying to place blame but it is possible that if this was the case it could have minimized the amount of people hit unless of course he did this on purpose.