'Donna was so alive and then, in an instant, she was gone'

On World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims, Neil Fox says we can all act to prevent tragic deaths on the road, like his sister Donna's, who died in 2016

Donna Fox, who was killed in a road traffic accident in 2016, pictured with her brother Neil Fox. Picture: Neil Fox

World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims wasn't really on my radar. The same is true for most of us I guess. That all changed because of the first Tuesday morning of September 2016, the sixth. Six is a number that is etched in my heart and mind. Tuesday too.

I'd acted as an usher by chance at a ceremony for it, 10 months before that fateful day. I was based in Drogheda's Augustinian community in 2015-2016 doing some ministry work; they have a very involved history with pastoral support on road tragedies. It was a beautiful Mass, memorable not just for the fitting music and candles and photos that honoured many loved ones of the congregation that day, but because the priest who celebrated that Mass had many years prior lost a sibling on the roads himself. His homily was a rallying cry for all of us to take full responsibility for our road conduct. It stuck in my mind.

A former boyfriend and another friend of mine both had died in road crashes many years back. Growing up, I walked by a little cross daily just yards from my house in rural north county Dublin which marked the spot a little boy had died in a tractor accident on the road. He was in my mother's class at school. A young man had been killed off his motorbike on the other road near us.

Donna Fox was the girl on the bike whose death made the headlines and airwaves. She was the face I put to the cycling safety campaigns that predated the collision that robbed her from this world, in hope of improving things. My goal was and remains that Donna's legacy will be safer roads for cycling, safer driving behaviours, better funding, proper infrastructure, and enforcement of legislation.

Donna was a nutritionist in Meaghers pharmacy next door to Google on Barrow St, Dublin. She was a qualified jockey. Described as a fitness fanatic by one newspaper in the days following her death, Donna had been very athletic as a child and teenager, not fanatical though. She maintained her fitness in the adulthood years she was granted; by running and, as we all know, cycling. Her name is so synonymous with cycling for a girl that never was a club member or the like. That said she took part in the Maynooth to Galway Charity Cycle a few times.

There are lots of things that can be said about Donna. Just as there are lots of statistics we hear of ad nauseum. But the most vital thing about Donna, about the statistics, the names we sometimes hear and photos we sometimes see on the news, is that she was loved. She was our sister, she was Peter's daughter. (Our mother Catherine, predeceased). Donna was a huge part of so many lives in so many ways, like all who die needlessly in these almost unanimously preventable road traffic collisions.

Humanising the statistics

World Day of Remembrance is about humanising the statistics. We share our loved ones with you because we believe it means you won't have to. The good thing, the heartbreaking thing, is that road deaths are absolutely preventable. We are in a position to do something — that's why this awful "club" does matter. It can and has informed policy and legislation. It does save lives.

Donna was one of 188 people who were killed in road traffic collisions in 2016, the ninth of 10 cyclists who died that year. Each of those had family, friends, their own unique story. They were part of the fabric of our country.

Donna was one of 188 people who were killed in road traffic collisions in 2016, the ninth of 10 cyclists who died that year. Picture: Neil Fox

What's often overlooked is the effect road deaths have on our emergency services, our first responders, on witnesses to these collisions. Their trauma is forgotten, I feel. I think back to Lolo and her family who brought me in for breakfast the day before Donna's funeral, when I first visited the site she died at. Lolo had made tea for the driver and others at the scene. She'd given kindness.

I'm blessed to know Amanda very well. She contacted me a year after the crash. Amanda had jumped from her car and dashed to make a valiant effort to save our sister's life. She performed CPR, trained all her life in it as cabin crew, yet this was the first time she had to use it. I'll always be grateful to her. 

I don't know Paul, the man who tried frantically to stop the collision from happening. He screamed and yelled at the driver to look, to stop... It was not to be. 

Paul and Amanda are heroes to me, they tried. By God, they tried.

But Donna died.

That's the stone-cold reality. Blunt, uncompromising, final.

We didn't see Donna, we weren't allowed receive her remains until the Friday evening. She was killed on Tuesday morning. Things happen. In the haze of shock you don't fully have the wherewithal to question, to demand. You survive. You tread water.

It's always a joy to remember Donna. My favourite anecdote about her is her 21st birthday. No party, no fuss, but the present. I brought her adored teddy Grover (of Sesame Street) to the teddy bear hospital to be repaired, but not "too" repaired! That was her best gift, typical Donna.

The mundane stands out

It's the mundane that actually stands out. I'd be walking around the supermarket and texting her about nutrition and allergies, we'd be meeting in the city and one of us would forget our phone and yet just sense where the other would be and arrive as though all planned.

I texted Donna at lunch time as we were due to meet the next day. The next day never came for Donna. I didn't know that my beautiful sister was already dead when I sent that text. Her phone in her bag, saturated in water. 

Like me, Donna always had water in her bag. The bottle broke when the lorry hit her, knocking her off her bike, taking her from us all, forever. Her cycling helmet smashed into tiny pieces across the road.

Donna's death is but a second in the three decades she graced our lives. She is so much more than the way she died. Her loyalty to those she loved, her love of country life and horses and animals, her childlike appreciation of Christmas and Halloween, her doting of her only nephew Callum, the sparkle in those gorgeous eyes that lit up the room. Her laughter! Donna was so much. She was so alive. And then in an instant she was gone.

World Day of Remembrance is for Donna, it's for my dear friend Elber's husband and children, it's for the missing person at the dinner tables across Ireland this Christmas. We remember them. 

But it's more than that, it has to be. It's about hope. It's about preventing you losing your life, yes you. It's about making our roads safe for your loved ones, for your child. It's about us, you, and me, and how we act responsibly as we walk, drive, cycle.

Together we must make the difference.

Let's have old Donna's dying peacefully in their sleep. Not young Donna with her beloved and beleaguered Grover in a coffin. Gone too soon.