Katarzyna Stanczyk. Remember the name. Katarzyna Stanczyk, cyclist, is dead, killed by a lorry on January 14th at North King Street in Dublin. You want to know why this 26-year old won't see 27? You, mostly. Because for the most part, you don't give a damn about road deaths, writes Kevin Myers.
They happen to other people; isn't that so? Which is why deaths mount remorselessly, without a whimper from all those letter-writers, TDs and broadcasters who can be relied on to shrill hysterically and beat someone to death over the trivial, passing mood of the day, yet ignore our greatest scandal.
But there is another reason. Stupidity. Asinine, supine, organisational stupidity.
For years, I have been urging the addition of extra mirrors on those lorries with in-built restricted vision before they are allowed into our cities - and to absolutely no effect. But now it seems that the authorities were actually trying to do something about such lorries. This only emerged during a recent inquest into the death of 80-year old William Keating, crushed by a lorry at a Dublin pedestrian crossing.
In that inquest the jury was told of an "educational awareness campaign" about lorries that give their drivers limited vision. So, who were the campaigners trying to educate? Lorry-drivers? The Road Hauliers Association? The importers of lorries? The manufacturers (the criminals who are morally and legally responsible for the deaths that result)? No. The Garda and National Safety Council awareness campaign has been aimed at other road users to teach us about the blind spots lorry-drivers experience. "Not everyone has been reached by this campaign in relation to blind spots," Garda Edward Davin, a forensic investigator, told the William Keating inquest.
Not everyone has been reached? Jesus, I've been writing on this subject till I'm purple in the gills, and even I have never heard of it. But that's the lesser point. For making the general public responsible for the consequences of the institutional delinquencies of lorry manufacturers, lorry drivers and the Road Hauliers Association is like making rape victims guilty for being raped. In this world view, lorry manufacturers apparently don't have to change their vehicles and make them safer, any more than rapists have to curtail their desires. Instead, cyclists have to become literate in the lore of lorry black-spots, and no doubt learn how to detect them as they approach from behind. Oh yes, and you girls, if you wear that low-cut little Brazilian number and you get gang-banged, you've no one else to blame but yourself.
Poor Katarzyna was merely the first cyclist to die on our roads in 2006. A dozen others or so will follow, while Ireland watches on, unmoved. Between 1996 and 2002, of the 21 cyclists killed in the Dublin City Council area, 16 were crushed by lorries. In the past two years in Dublin, eight pedestrians or cyclists have been killed by lorries whose drivers could not see them because of vehicle design faults. Moreover, heavy trucks have accounted for 78 per cent of all cyclist deaths in Dublin over the past eight years and have been responsible for one-quarter of all road deaths.
The figures could not be clearer, or the situation more scandalous.
Now what has the Road Hauliers Association done about this? After all, it has some clout. It can mobilise scores of lorries to block toll booths when it doesn't like tolls. If it was really interested in reducing the amount of macedoine de bicycliste smeared all over our roads, it could insist that membership of its association was contingent on not having blind spots on their vehicles. Comparable professional bodies such as the IMA and the INO insist that its members adhere to certain ethical standards: why should the RHA not insist its members may not drive lorries which are almost designed to harvest cyclists and pedestrians at corners?
Stupid question, of course. Because there's no money in it for the drivers, is there? That's the really important thing. Compare and contrast the energy with which the RHA has addressed the issue of road-tolls with the lassitude with which it has tackled pedestrian and cyclist deaths. If RHA had seriously wanted to stop the casual butchery inflicted on people, it could have done something by this time.
But far from saving its members money, such measures would actually cost them. These fine lads can certainly blockade toll-booths to demand a cut in costs; yet they seem curiously unable to blockade Dáil Éireann, insisting that lorries be made safer by law.
So demanding the legally obligatory addition of mirrors or video cameras to lorries to remove blind spots is clearly too much to ask of the RHA - or, come to that, the dealers, or the manufacturers, who of course know of the unnecessary killings that they are causing. Meanwhile, the Government continues to allow these lorries to enter cities, where terrible deaths (admittedly, of the largely powerless and unimportant: an octogenarian here, a voteless Pole there) are an actuarial certainty. Then, when yet another victim has been crushed to death, the National Safety Council and An Garda Síochána can shake their imbecilic heads sadly and murmur to the mangled remains: "Everyone has still not been reached by this campaign to tell people to avoid blind spots."
But if you not have been reached by this campaign, some 20 of you this year will certainly be reached by the blind-spot itself, followed shortly afterwards by the lorry. And then it's farewell fair world, a heart-shattering funeral, a line in this newspaper, and maybe even a little wreath from the RHA.