This is a picture from about a week ago of a soldier riding his bike to work at Fort Liberty/Bragg. It got some laughs on social media, especially since he’s a captain who’s wearing elbow and knee pads, but no big deal.

Yesterday, local news reported that “Fayetteville police are investigating after a soldier was hit and killed on Reilly Road. According to FPD, officers responded to a crash about 7:15 p.m. Wednesday involving an electric bike and a minivan…when a minivan rear-ended him.”

According to people who know him, he lost his driving privileges on post for speeding. Something that would be addressed by a speeding ticket anywhere else in our country was addressed by taking away his driving and basically forcing him to ride a bike on highways and extremely busy roads to get to work. Now he’s dead.

Veterans are all too familiar with this kind of draconian nonsense. We live with these absurd, nonsensical policies every day. Heavy handed and sometimes dangerous punishments are handed out for seemingly innocuous violations. In this case, a primary staff officer is dead (he was the S6 for his battalion.)

It infuriates me to see this stuff play out over and over. Often times it’s only social media pages posting context for what happened. America doesn’t ever know WHY someone died, just that they did. I desperately wish this nation was more involved with the day to day of its military again and actually knew how service members were living. A mom getting upset over their son being “smoked” raised awareness at the highest levels of congress and changed policy. Imagine if people cared as much about ass backwards policies like this as they did about their kid getting some extra PT.

Originally Posted By TheTwilightZone⏩