We need a Citizens Assembly. Donna Fox Anniversary 2023. Road Safety,

Tragedy upon tragedy on our roads united us all the last few weeks. We must build upon this collective sadness and shock now and make walking, cycling, driving on our roads as safe as possible. Almost every loss or injury or bereavement are preventable, this is why we are so passionate about fighting for road safety.

Today marks the seventh anniversary since my sister Donna Fox was killed cycling to work in Dublin city. Almost every year since I have took to the airwaves in one form or another in trying to promote the importance of road safety and how it impacts absolutely every person. We all are road users after all. I never take for granted the support and coverage, and will always pay tribute to the media for highlighting stories and issues relating to road safety. With the media things would be far far worse. 

Donna was 30 years old, a normal person going about a normal day like all the 25 people who never made it home in August just gone. Donna was a kind, caring, loving sister to me, beyond loyal and supportive. Not a day goes by without missing her but yet her spirit always feels close by. 

Due to the enormity of recent losses including of infants and young students, all ages of course, but the loss of the young brings such a mourning for what might have been and as for infants...it just is beyond heart-breaking; I opted against the usual simple "Give Time, Give Space" memorial today on cycling directed at motorists. It is postponed. However, it would be impossible to stay silent totally today given the fact Road Safety is the main news on Donna's anniversary and there has been an announcement from the Minister of State Jack Chambers and the department of Justice regarding speeding limits. 

While I warmly welcome this move and will support it and any other measures that RSA, Government, An Gardai Siochana bring about or try to, with a clear aim of saving lives, it simply is not enough. It also is crazy to think it has took this long for them to come to this decision. A child could have told them it was required decades ago! 

Having repeatedly spoke against the decision to drop road safety to a junior position in government since Shane Ross left office in 2020, I think my position is clear on this as outlined most recently last week in The Irish Examiner. 

Today I am calling for what is actually required. 

What is a must! 

We need a root and branch overhaul where road safety is concerned. 

We need to go to the drawing board, we need to look at international best practice, we need all stake holders to listen to one another, we need the voices of support organizations for victims of road traffic collisions heard. We must see this for what it is, a mess but one that can be righted with proper focus.

I am asking for a Citizens Assembly to be set up as soon as possible on road safety strategy to assist the government, gardai, RSA and all tasked with this enormous responsibility to keep us and our loved ones safe on the roads. 

I have Borderline Personality Disorder. Blog1 "Diagnosis"

 Personality. "You have a great personality". 

"One thing you don't lack is personality."

And as I am Irish an oft expression would be "Ah Neil is great craic", "Sure Foxy is a good skin." 

Not to make out that I have no detractors, critics or those who might struggle to say a nice word about me, but I am pretty sure nobody would have ever thought I had a personality condition that was harming my life and affecting not just me but those close to me too. 

Fond of a drink at times. He has his demons. Searching soul. Let's things get on top of him. Deep. But a gas character when he is himself.... 

But personality disorder...nah!

"You know about personality traits?" My psychiatrist asks me after a lengthy session. 

I had been watching England beat Morocco in the first half of one of their games in the waiting area. Assuming an ordinary session was on the cards just as I assumed a win was England's too. I was right on the latter at least. Caught on the hop on the former. My boyfriend said afterwards, and probably rightly so "Just as well you didn't know what was coming..." 

For decades I have had depression, at times severe and even profound, always there at best moderate. It is normally manageable, with some major flare ups but it's with me so long that I probably felt as I entered the psychiatrist's office in the hospital, that I knew what type questions and chat we would have. I knew I would be given the same prescription for the depression. I'd let him know about the progress in the last couple of months, about the weekly talk therapy I have committed to and the like.

I always feel the need to stress some positive in sessions as it can otherwise seem like a moan fest or drain me and I often think, probably wrongly, them also if I just focus solely on what's worsening, not improving or causing me problems, the chaos, the pain, the fears, the desperation of a mind at war with itself. I class myself as an eternal optimist, odd I know given my mind can be so negative and self destructive. But in the chair I think it is important to give some positive, and the good thing is I can always pluck some positives out without resorting to polly-anna syndrome or lies. 

We would map out a little plan perhaps building on what's helping and looking at what isn't. We would discuss the suicidal end of things, something I always dread. It always makes me anxious as it's so hard to know what way to phrase things that will ensure I won't have Gardai coming running! It is something nobody says, but discussing being suicidal is a real tough one. We are told by every mental health campaign out there to tell someone but it puts an onus on them to report it, its a tricky area most of us don't fully understand and the notion that my thoughts need the attention of police just seems absurd to me. I will say yes I am still having suicidal thoughts regularly but not as bad as a few months ago. But aside from that, I am always an open book so I was not pre-empting what I would be saying to him.

An appointment with a psychiatrist is never something I see as just routine, no matter how relaxed I may be about needing to be under their care. However, I was not in the least worried about it. I was glad of the support and the profession which is unfairly maligned in my opinion. 

Borderline Personality Disorder. I am glad he didn't use abbreviations, BPD seemed too casual, too glib for what was like a time bomb going off....

It has been 12 days now since the conversation. The consultation. Session. 

On the tenth day I opted to press post on X, but until that moment I was in honesty shell-shocked and bewildered. Somehow, putting it out into the world is easier than telling people individually. That might sound ridiculous perhaps it is. I had just told two friends and Robert before that. It is weird as obviously it is something old not new, as in I have had the symptoms and issues for decades, but the idea of it being an actual disorder, a named condition just somehow floored me. 

I sat in the park staring out at the trees. 

It was a shock because it hits the nail on the head. It fits. It fits in a way nothing else ever has. 

Today I walked the beach nearest me, glorious Tramore. I have walked it many times in many states of mind. 

The psychiatrist printed off some information for me to read at leisure. Weirdly I did just that, I am a fast reader and avid scribbler on pages normally, always taking notes and drawing analogies. But these pages I held in my hands the other week sat on a bench in The People's Park, I read slowly, very slowly. 

At least there is a cool song that keeps coming to my mind these last days as I digest the news that I have borderline personality disorder. 

"Borderline feels like I'm going to lose my mind

You just keep on pushing my love over the borderline"

Good ole Madonna.

The days of walk-mans and Bermuda shorts come to mind.

The days when the seeds had already been planted it seems for this disorder and the depression to come. 

Chat next Tuesday night.

Thanks to all on X in particular for the messages and likes and  the 112,000 views so far of my coming out as Borderline. 

Borderline personality disorder - Wikipedia Strangely Wikipedia is pretty good on it overall. 

GDPR and RSA and #RoadSafety

There aren't words to describe how much it would help if RSA and similar bodies revealed appropriate details on collisions. It's difficult to fathom how it currently doesn't. 

We must address the carnage on our roads in a robust way, all of us. There can be no hiding behind gdpr or the like where the common good is concerned.

Donna Fox was my sister, she was a fatal statistic in 2016. The ninth of the ten cyclists killed. One out of the  188 who were killed on our roads that year.

Donna was killed in an unprotected cycle lane on her way to work. A painted line since altered thankfully.

A lorry driver hit and killed her sadly. Since then I've met countless men and women who have lost loved ones, but I'm possibly more passionate about those who survive with bad injuries... They need a voice. Life altering injuries, even milder ones, destroy and change lives. 

This must be addressed. 

If GDPR is an obstacle to saving lives we must as a country look at it. We can't sleep walk here.

Serious injuries destroy lives effect our economy and hamper family life all over our country, absolutely anything that can contribute to addressing this is a must.

I'm a huge supporter of RSA on a personal level and also professionally but we must look at GDPR. If it negatively affects road safety and the information and action upon it which will save lives and reduce and hopefully eliminate injuries and fatalities, the RSA , our government and the dept of Transport and Justice must pull their heads together and do something.

I like all road victims and their loved ones support all investigation into this and into how things can be improved. Statistics seem cold but when unrevealed it's worse. We must have statistics and information to protect lives on our roads, to learn best practice, to educate and to figure the best way forward. I support any endeavor to improve this. 

A poem

PRESS RELEASE Donna Fox Anniversary .

"Give Time, Give Space" is the annual Donna Fox anniversary appeal to motorists to slow down and give cyclists room on our roads. It is also a plea to the Minister for Justice to give teeth to the hard won 2019 Dangerous Overtaking of a Cyclist legislation by enabling robust enforcement in way of a designated national portal for cycling.

Donna Fox's tragic death on September 6th 2016 in Dublin city gave impetus to efforts to improve roads for cycling safety. Donna was cycling to work when hit by a delivery lorry driver, dying at the scene. Ever an optimist in life such is the emphasis of "Give Time, Give Space" in her memory. The message is that a little time a little space can, and does save lives! Everyone has the power to keep cyclists safe. 

This year however focus is also being raised by "Give Time, Give Space" on what could be viewed as a demotion of road safety by the decision to push Road Safety down to a junior portfolio in 2020. Ireland was hailed "a model for the European Union" on winning the ETSC Road Safety Performance Index Award in June 2019. To keep and build on this demands a Cabinet Position. 

"Where road safety is concerned there can be no let up nevermind a clear demotion by government. The Minister for Transport should be over road safety pure and simple. I would call on the Taoiseach to reinstate road safety to this status. Increases in fatalities since the position was downgraded shouldn't go unnoticed either." Neil Fox 

Particular frustration remains with the Department of Justice who have failed thus far to bring in a portal for cycling (to assist and simplify reporting of near misses and dangerous passes by motorists).

"It is regrettable that despite persistent calls from so many stakeholders the Minister for Justice has shown no will to act with the urgency required, this coupled with no Cabinet Minister actively at helm of road safety in Ireland is concerning to say the least." Neil Fox.

"Donna was an amazing loving and kind, fiercely loyal girl taken too soon. I'm honoured to have had her as my sister. To remember her is to look to future with hope not despair for the future of safer cycling. Government need to play their part but we all do too, give time, give space today and always as you drive. A second is difference between life and death." 

ENDS

Neil Fox.

Road Safety Advocate and brother of Donna.

0871708838 neilfoxcork@gmail.com 

 neilhealyfox@gmail.com

@NeilHealyFox Twitter.

     

Snobby Residents and Road Safety

 Fatal crash cyclist's brother slams 'snobby' residents

By Laura Colgan, News Reporter, Irish Daily Star Tuesday October 27th 2020.

The brother of a cyclist killed in a collision with a truck has blasted residents opposing safety bollards. 

Residents of Fitzwilliam Street in Dublin 2 are urging Dublin City Council to remove the "distasteful" cycle lane bollards put in place to protect cyclists.

The South Georgian Core Residents Association claims the wands used to keep cyclists safe are "visual pollutants" and are not in keeping with the city's conservation area.

Road safety advocate Neil Fox said the safety of cyclists should be prioritised over the appearance of the bollards.

Nonsense

His sister Donna Fox died after she was hit by a truck at the junction of Seville Place and Sheriff Street Upper (Guild Street n.f) while cycling to work on September 6, 2016. Donna (30) had been wearing a helmet and travelling in the cycle lane at the time. 

Neil said: "The subject has reached a new low when a group is opposed to the new bollards or wands because they are 'visual pollutants'. 

"What utter nonsense, which sounds snobbish. The vulnerable need protection and that should and does override such concerns.

"Bollards and wands are hardly ugly or unpleasant to the eye when compared with the reason they are put there.

   "Surely the image of an injured person or indeed a fatality and all the aftermath of that is the more difficult vision than a few wands on a road. It is a crass complaint."

Dublin City Council put bollards in place at the site where Donna died within a few weeks of the crash.

Lights

At her inquest, the jury recommended installing extra traffic lights to allow cyclists to cross junctions safely.

   Neil said: "Within a few weeks, Dublin City Council erected 13 bollards at the site. The bollards have since been replaced by a whole new system.

     "The local people who had been traumatized by what they had seen and heard that awful Tuesday morning[that Donna died] and were far from worried about how those few plastic wands looked.

   "I hope that residents and such groups will cop on.

"We need to start seeing cycling lanes as a normal part of city life."

Death of a Cyclist

The news of the tragic death of cyclist Thiago Osorio Cortes in the week of my sister Donna's fourth anniversary, both killed cycling in very close proximity, has obviously deeply saddened me.

My heart goes out to Thiago's family, loved ones, friends and colleagues, and also very much in my thoughts are the cycling and the Brazilian communities in Dublin. 

Thiago like Donna was in the prime of his life, so the mourning for what might have been and the decades of "if onlys" add a deep poignancy to the grief. I really hope each member of his family and loved one is surrounded by good people at this time and in the weeks and months to come. 

This case is heart breaking on so many levels but one kindness can be afforded his family by those who were in the car involved, and that is very simple; come forward, do the right thing and own up to the Gardai now. Nothing will change what has happened, nothing will bring this young man back, but afford him and his loved ones the dignity they deserve. I can not imagine the torture of a hit and run element to such a horror as it is. 

In the four years since Donna died there have been definitely improvements where cycling safety and indeed cycling acceptance is concerned, more needs to be done of course, but we have seen changes. But at the end of the day no amount of changes in legislation, funding or anything forces us as individuals to do the right thing on the roads, personal responsibility does however. We must look out for and care for one another on the roads. Life is fragile and precious. 

Always always always remember that IT COULD BE YOU, it could be you injured or killed, it could be you bereaved, it could be you behind the wheel, it could be you that knocks somebody down, Let us all do what we can to ensure we do all possible to safeguard each other on the roads. 

Thiago and Donna, different situations but the same in the sense they both got on their bikes and never returned home alive. They both became photographs in a newspaper. They both were too young, too alive, too loved to become a photograph.

Cowen Rightly Sacked but not for Road Safety

September 2016, the month that Barry Cowen TD was stopped for drink driving, happens to be the month that morphed me into an unlikely road safety campaigner. A couple of weeks before my sister Donna Fox became one of the 188 people to die on the roads in the State that year, the ninth cyclist. Donna's death while not connected to drink driving, stopped life as I knew it, not just hers but my own. Life after the crash is a trauma in itself from which I am finally emerging, but you never get over such a horror, and it is a horror. At best we come through it bruised and changed forever but with a loved one to live on for and try to make proud in a way I suppose. 

There was harsh criticism of many Road Safety activists and spokespeople in the last week, who were we to speak up let alone those who called for the Cabinet Minister's resignation and later sacking in my case anyhow, were seen as what was it again, oh yes "witch hunters" with a dubious agenda! 

Road Safety is something that I see as crucial to all our lives. Deputy Cowen was a TD at the time of the speeding and later drink driving offences in 2016. A TD is a lawmaker, this is why the bar is higher - let alone for a Cabinet Minister. Deputy Cowen I have heard in the last week or so, when in my opinion forced into apologies at the twelfth not even eleventh hour, said that he wishes as way of atonement really to work in the future with groups promoting road safety and those bereaved by road deaths. I would have given more faith to that were it not that three months after been caught for one road offence he was caught for another, and four years on it took front page headlines to make him, we are lead to believe, finally disclose to the Leader of his party, what anyone would imagine he would have disclosed long ago given his position. Much has been said on the many other questions that have arisen since on his license issues and whether he ever sat a test, or did he ever use L or N plates etc. The focus on drink driving and speeding was bad enough without all these additional things that led many scratching their heads.... 

Anyhow, I welcome the decision to sack Barry Cowen. I appreciated Mary Lou Mc Donald's direct questioning in the Dail and it became clear watching it that the Taoiseach had no choice but to act and act now. Within hours he had, I would hope with pressure from the Tanaiste and Minister Eamon Ryan to do so. 

It is my belief that the chuckle and wink antics of some TDs and others online in the days as this story unfolded not only showed them up, but unfortunately shows a rather juvenile attitude to road traffic offences. The amount of "but sure who hasn't penalty points, charges etc" shows an ingrained attitude that we must address. That's why campaigners don't go away quietly because we see that the message is lost on so many until sadly it visits their own door. I have no personal issue with Barry Cowen, I have never met him or to my memory had any contact with him in my own campaigns on cycling etc. Had he come out and squared with the people and took the questions in the Dail, had he made clear his wrong doing rather than try to drag it out and drip feed everyone, then start calling the gardai Pulse records into question, well maybe then I would not have been so harsh in calling for his removal from Cabinet. But he did and said as he chose to and that won zero respect from me. 

Barry Cowen did not lose his Ministerial position due to his ambivalent attitude to road safety and road traffic laws, that would have happened immediately upon the breaking of the news. No, political pressure from the opposition and one hopes also from Fine Gael and the Green Party colleagues in government, terrible publicity and farcical utterances that the Taoiseach found himself in the position of making in the Dail today (Tuesday), and what no doubt is seen as a direct attack on the Gardai from a government minister is how Brian Cowen found himself sacked earlier tonight. Ego pulled the rug from under him in the end none of our complaints, but his lavish attacks on everyone but himself. That is how I see it. 

I really hope that Barry Cowen does redeem himself in the eyes of road safety campaigners and victims by holding to his vow to be involved and of help going forward. It always comes across as blame and personal but for me it is not, it is about calling out wrong doing and trying to use it to highlight road safety and road deaths and injuries as something that can affect every single one of us. Driving comes with huge responsibility, it is not a mere right and something to be complacent about. Lives including ones own life depends on such vigilance. 

Conor McGregor Road Safety is no joke!

As a Conor Mc Gregor fan I am disappointed in him for his latest disregard for road safety, he clearly is learning nothing from past convictions. Criticisms are inevitable that we are all only complaining about him because he is a well known personality and why not say the same about the many others who do such things daily. Well the difference is what Mc Gregor does, like it or not gets coverage and is copied by his legions of fans. 

In this latest incident it is not only disregard being shown to road users and indeed to his own safety, but it is a flagrant show of contempt to the garadai and all of us involved in road safety campaigning too, as well as those who are recovering from been in collisions on the roads, those bereaved through road deaths and the emergency services and so many others who are left to deal with these tragedies.    

The onus is now obviously on the gardai to act on this. 

Conor clearly had no qualms about publishing himself breaking the law, endangering himself and others in the process. 

I wish people would get it together on road safety, it is not a sexy subject and wins no accolades, believe me, but it is vital that we continue to call out such behaviour. 

I do not wish to over personalise this but Mc Gregor is a devoted father and a great sportsman indeed business man who has shown in recent times his willingness to put his money up to help the country, with his help towards personal protection equipment at early point of Covid_19 hitting these shores. But he needs to cop on and up his game here. I would love to see him get involved in campaigning for road safety, slaps on the wrists are the norm in this country for dangerous and or negligent conduct on the roads, no matter how serious the consequences...so it might be good to see those who offend having to meet people like myself or those who work in the field directly to hear the reality of  any disregard for ones safety and safety of others while on the roads, especially driving where obviously the odds of killing or injuring someone are much higher.     

As for the offence itself here, the using of a mobile phone while driving certainly is a growing concern.

In general there are ways of proving when a text or a call was in process more or less currently, in the aftermath of a crash, I think we need to be mindful of the fact that scrolling is extremely prevalent and just as distracting indeed I feel it is even more distracting, looking down Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, scrolling away , this is crazy behaviour. 

Nobody is immune from crashes and no expensive car or designer watch or any amount of Instagram followers will prevent a crash. 

The message is not only to Conor Mc Gregor and his fans but to all of us, we have to stop been complacent in our driving, cycling, walking whatever, we must not let our love of social media and connecting with people, cloud our common sense on the roads. The consequences can be a lot more than a telling off from the Gardai or someone like me complaining, the consequences can be fatal.     

I feel privileged to be involved in Leading Lights RSA initiative which thankfully shows that many around the country, especially young people, are trying to make a creative and real difference in protecting us all on the roads, I wish the likes of Conor Mc Gregor had even a little of their gumption. 

After The Crash

Since my sister  Donna was the “girl on the bike” in Dublin who was killed in a moment’s collision with a lorry on her way to work, each cyclist’s death registers somewhere in my heart. It’s a strange one, aside from a couple of families who lost loved ones in cycling tragedies that I know a little; I don’t know these people at all, yet there’s a kinship there. 

I read on Twitter this morning that ten year old Adam Lyons died - barely had I digested that sad news but I learned about another cyclist killed in the same twenty four hours along with a driver. Three lives lost on our roads, so many more lives scattered asunder in an instant that can never be undone.

The moment that you are told is the moment that your life changes, it is so seismic that it defies words. A road death transports us to an unknown land of a grief like no other in my experience. Not that there is a hierarchy in grief obviously, but it is different. It brings challenges few can imagine quite aside from the horrendous shock and devastating loss itself.

Was it her fault? Was she not wearing a helmet? Bikes are far too dangerous. You take your life in your hands cycling. Why didn’t she drive her car or get the train? Far too many bikes on the roads now. These comments, made to me by those I knew in the couple of days after the crash, were nothing like the rants and assumptions that were been tweeted even before I knew Donna had been knocked down and had died. The trolls are the trolls but they also are road users like us all so these damning groundless attitudes do worry me.

Then you have the Gardaí the emergency services and in some cases the gasps of hope soon dashed in hospital corridors or the back of ambulances. “Donna is in the city’s morgue.” Aaron and John the two Gardaí who broke the news to me explained, so we didn’t have any hope to be dashed. In Donna’s case you also had the media, who hand on heart nearly four years on have always been supportive. Perhaps not everyone’s experience though. Nothing prepares you to see your sisters photo on the newspaper stands under those tragic headlines, or on the way to buy clothes for her funeral to hear her death discussed on national radio shows. Now it is not something I blink an eye about as I have used it as a platform since to campaign for greater safety measures for cycling and to involve myself in road safety promotion in whatever way I can. But back in that September week, it was all a haze, all a new world. It was surreal.

These type of deaths effect everyone, it touches people who you have never met or known, most are wonderful when they get in touch but some are crazies. Being easily accessible online as I was I had some interesting encounters let’s just say. In a way those things are a distraction from the real life horror though and I look back and smile at the nonsense now. 

Donna was coming up to her 31st birthday, very young in my eyes still, our mother Catherine had died at 51 five years earlier which was young in my book too. There was so much potential, that torturous mourning for what might have been. No matter how much we know it’s pointless; it is near impossible not to languish in such thinking, in those early days in particular. 

I think of those families this week. I wonder how they are in the maze that they’ve been thrown into. I think of those who witnessed the crashes too, the first responders. Each death on the road touches deep into the fabric of so many peoples psyche. I’m blessed to know well in these last years, Amanda the woman who tried to save Donna’s life, relentlessly doing CPR having jumped out of her car. In our mutual sharing and unusual but tight bond, I have found that not only those whose loved ones are lost have their lives altered but others too. People like Amanda who only met Donna in those last moments of her life, seconds maybe. A man on his motorbike Paul will forever remember shouting and screaming in hope of getting the lorry driver’s attention. Just two of those impacted.

Each fatal crash has differences so I only can speak of my own experience. There were two people involved in the crash that took my sisters life, Donna and Henry (not his real name but more human than saying the “driver”). There were two immediate families left shaken to the core. Two families who in this case didn’t know one another, had no connection other than those few seconds if even that, which reshaped a part of us. I didn’t meet them until in a coroners court eighteen months later. Each collision is different, but all involve people, real people, someone’s sister someone’s son. I genuinely feel for Henry even though it’s a very different process he has been through, but probably outside of those closest to Donna, he is the only other person who understands the gravity of that Tuesday morning in 2016. 

For me I found direction and healing these last years in campaigning and working with RSA and others in highlighting the seriousness we must give road safety. I went from been a guarded person to wearing my heart on my sleeve and sharing my personal journey, it’s not for everyone, but each of us find our way. Working for safer roads, new legislation and radical increases in funds for cycling infrastructure saved me from the abyss. I messed up many times in my personal life as trauma and grief complicate everything if you don’t get the supports you need or reach out for the wrong ones. But I am proud too, proud to try to do good in memory of my sister and all those who are far more than a news story. Proud of the incredible people I know now who have helped me find a new way in the world. But of course never as proud of anything as to say that girl on the bike was my sister.