Woman launches road safety campaign after narrow miss on Cork road

Ella Goddin has launched a GoFundMe campaign to buy dash-cams for people living along the R585 to document the movement of heavy goods vehicles there

Emergency services working to free the injured driver from the car following the crash on the R585 on August 3.

A woman who narrowly avoided a head-on collision with a truck in which a man and woman were seriously injured has launched a road safety campaign.

Ella Goddin, who lives near Dunmanway in West Cork, said the combination of poor road design, high speeds and lack of mobile coverage in rural areas is “a recipe for disaster”.

“I did not think it was possible that I would clear the road before impact, that is how close the lorry came to me. All of this took only a few seconds. I thought I was going to die,” she said.

Ms Goddin was driving behind a car on the R585, near Coppeen, along the well-known ‘Bantry line’ route, around lunchtime on August 3 when she saw it and an oncoming truck collide on a bend.

“The car ahead had no time to react,” she said.

As the two vehicles careered towards her, she had to take evasive action to avoid her car being struck and she turned sharply into an open gate to her left. She believed the people whose car was struck were dead or dying given the damage to the car.

But when she dialled 999, she said the operator couldn’t hear her call because of a poor phone signal in the area, and the call had to be made from a landline in a house close to the crash scene.

She said she found the female passenger on her hands and knees on the road, with serious injuries, and the male driver was trapped in the car, seriously injured and losing consciousness.

Emergency services arrived and firefighters used cutting equipment to free the driver from the wreckage while the Irish Community Air Ambulance landed in a field nearby.

Ms Goddin described the sound of the aircraft “as the best sound ever”. The injured driver was airlifted to Cork University Hospital.

She praised locals who provided blankets, tea and biscuits, and all of the emergency services for their response, and she has given a statement to gardaí who are investigating the collision.

“I feel like this will stay with me for the rest of my life. I am grateful to be alive,” she said. 

The lady of the house told me that the gate is usually closed. The only reason it was open is that they were getting a delivery of gravel.

“Not enough money is being spent on rural road safety. We in rural Ireland pay the same taxes as someone living in the capital but we have to drive on unsafe roads in areas that don’t have proper mobile phone coverage. It’s like we are being treated as second-class citizens. It’s just not acceptable,” she said.

Road Safety Authority collision statistics for the R585 show that between 2005 and 2016, the period for which statistics are available, there have been three fatal accidents between Crookstown and Kealkil. Two of the deaths occurred in 2016.

Heavy goods vehicles were involved in five non-fatal accidents between 2005 and 2013 - two of which were head-on collisions - leaving six people with serious injuries, and four with minor injuries.

Ms Goddin welcomed confirmation from Cork County Council that it is undertaking a speed limit review of all roads in the county, and is considering over 500 submissions from the public. The review will be complete by September 2022.

She has now launched a GoFundMe campaign to buy dash-cams for people living along the R585 so they can document the movement of heavy goods vehicles in the area.