Hey folks, I'm Van Lee

This is a long story, so a Tl;dr for you is this- I was t-boned by a driver who ran a stop sign and it destroyed my car and broke my body. I need your help to recover. Read on for the full story and thank you so much for your time.

On October 12th, 2025 as I was driving home after a day of working everything about my life changed in the blink of an eye. I was casually driving on a residential back road when suddenly I lost all the air in my lungs and my head was violently crashed against the glass window to my left. I was in a haze but remember struggling to take a breath and suddenly another violent, jarring impact. This time, fortunately, my head crashed into the now deployed side airbag in my trusty 2014 Honda Civic. With a final bump and lurch I found myself sitting still, completely unaware as to what had just happened. It took me a minute or so to clear my head and get air into my lungs when I was snapped into reality by a voice coming from the other side of my car door. "Am I parked?" I remember wondering as the voice asked if I was alive.

Somehow I was, but I knew I was hurt so I asked if they were able to open the car door. As you can see from the pictures that wasn't an option, however, but they did manage to open my passenger side door and with a lot of effort and pain I was able to crawl out of it to figure out what just happened. The voice from earlier rang out again, asking if I felt OK. I didn't, but I told them I thought I was and I surveyed my surroundings, still quite fuzzy from the impact. There was glass everywhere, pieces of my car lying in the road and it sat before me, a crumpled mess of what was once my only monetarily valuable posession in life.

It turns out the voice belonged to a mere passerby who didn't know what happened but stopped to help. They called an ambulance and the police so fortunately I could just stand there confused and in pain. An hour or so later it was finally revealed what had happened- It turns out a young man and who I presume to be his girlfriend ran a stop sign (he claimed his brakes went out on him, but that doesn't actually appear to be the case) and hit me directly in the driver's side of my car. You can see the impact point and how it utterly annihilated that part of my car and led to my head going "splat" against my window. After this impact my car was pushed into a utility pole which absolutely destroyed the back side of my poor car, sending me spinning into the ditch where I finallly came to a stop. Every single rescue worker at the scene from the police, firefighters, EMTs, and even the tow truck driver had one thing to say to me: "how are you still alive after that?"

Fortunately for the other driver the impact was quite minor and his vehicle might even still be drivable going forward, and more importantly still, no one in his SUV was hurt.

Unfortunately for me, I was not blessed with the same fate.

Although I seem to have avoided any life-threatening injuries, this destruction of my vehicle is itself upending and potentially going to derail and destroy my life. In addition to my injuries (bruises everywhere, cuts from glass ripping apart my flesh, potential broken bones, and extreme muscle soreness and pain) I now no longer have a car, which means I can't perform my job which I relied upon for well over half my income in addition to, you know, getting from point A to point B for groceries, doctor's appointments, and all the other things you need transportation for. My car is totalled and I have nothing left.

Of course his insurance is incredibly weak and while I'm still waiting for the offer from the company as to how much they will pay me for the destruction of my car, it appears that through similar cases I'm not even going to get enough money to cover buying the exact same vehicle with the exact same mileage. Which also means I'm not going to have enough to pay my bills while I'm sitting at home, unable to lie on my side due to excrutiating pain. It means I can't actually get the medical help I potentially need, it means I can't pay a lawyer to fight this company on my behalf and it means I can't pay rent, insurance, buy food, and do the things which I need to survive. In short, this accident means I'm going to suffer tremendously and honestly I may not be able to come back from it all.

And that's why I'm here. I hate relying on others and asking for their help but friends, strangers, and mortal enemies... I need your help. I'm not asking for a new BMW. Hell, I'm not even asking for a new Honda. What I want is to go back to the way things were. I didn't mind being poor and working 80 hour weeks to barely scrape by, sure it sucked and we all want more but accidents like this do make you appreicate what you once had. I wish I could get back to it, but I'm aware that I can't. So today I'm asking if you can spare anything so that I can pay some bills and let my wounds heal. I'll need every dime of my settlement to get a new vehicle, and it's likely that I'll have to finance something which means even though I didn't have a car payment before, after an accident in which I had 0% fault now I'll have one which means I'll have to work even harder.

So if you've got a couple bucks to spare I ask that you please donate to my fund so that I can maybe rest a bit before having to get back out there to hustle like I always have and always will. If you can't afford to help, that's OK! Share this with your friends and maybe they can ease my pain and suffering.

But most importantly of all for anyone out there reading this- please, please, please pay attention when you're driving. Your mistake could cost someone else everything even if they did nothing wrong.

Thanks everyone for your time and donations,

Van