Good for the jury that presided over the inquest into the perfectly needless death of Tanya Holst, the German cyclist crushed to death in Dublin by a lorry, to call for front-view mirrors on lorries to remove blind spots. And good too for Tanya's mother Helga who, in a quite astonishing act of humanity and optimism, declared after the inquest: "I hope that all cyclists will benefit from this and that some good will come from Tanya's death."
I wish I could be so sanguine. The simple truth is that lorry drivers in Ireland know full well that they are immune to traffic laws. Even if laws were introduced to compel lorry-owners to fit mirrors to ensure maximum forward visibility, we know that lorries would never be inspected, nor their drivers prosecuted if found to be in breach of the law. Moreover, neither would massive and condign punishment fall on those public authorities which contribute to road deaths through negligence of their statutory duties.
Manhole cover
Tanya died on October 23rd last. A contributory factor in her death might well have been an old manhole cover on the road. She was certainly seen to wobble there just before a lorry drove over her. "It cannot have been an accident that that this repair job or infill [by Corporation workmen\] was done the following day," John Rogers SC told Tanya's inquest.
If it were the case that the manhole had a contributory role in Tanya's death, it would be yet another triumph for Dublin Corporation. For its road engineering just across O'Connell bridge at that same broad junction was also reported to have had a bearing on the death of another cyclist, Olivia Potterton, just four months earlier. The curiously protruding pavement at Aston Quay-Westmoreland Street makes it impossible for a lorry to turn left until quite late. When the lorry which killed her finally was able to make its turn, a blind spot had been created immediately beneath the driver. That's where Olivia was as she cycled homeward; and that's where she was crushed to death.
You might be surprised, as I was, to hear that such blind spots exist in such instantly lethal vehicles as container lorries. But you will not be surprised that nothing has been done to make the very existence of such blind spots in such trucks illegal. Nor will you be surprised that there has been no political uproar about such a scandalous waste of life, or the possible contributions made by our public bodies to these utterly avoidable deaths.
Perhaps you won't be surprised to hear that one third of the windscreen of the lorry that killed Tanya was filled with inessential items such as banners and teddy bears, or that no plans have been announced to outlaw such bric-a-brac. What would be the point?
For a law to be effective it has to be enforced, and the most rudimentary traffic laws are already routinely flouted by lorries, and have been for years, in perfect and sublime expectation that there will be no consequences. Lorry drivers are entirely right to be optimistic if they ignore the law. Who has not seen lorries bowling along above 60 m.p.h., safe from radar traps because their number-plates are obscured by mud? Who has not seen lorries overtaking illegally in the third lane of motorways, which they may not in law enter? Who has not seen lorries without working lights or brake-lights, hurtling through the night, apparently blissfully immune from prosecution? Who has not seen lorries sidle into yellow boxes at rush-hour, paralysing the entire city with that single deft move, safe in the knowledge that no one will ever be bothered to prosecute?
Lorry law
For there is common law, and there is lorry law. Dublin Corporation recently outlawed the use of delivery vehicles in the city centre at peak traffic times as if it were doing something brave and decisive. Yet there is hardly a capital city in Europe which doesn't confine deliveries and waste collection to night-time and weekends. Certainly there is none which permits delivery lorries to sit on double lines in crowded city centre streets in mid-day as long as it suits the convenience of the cheerful, whistling driver.
These are not small points. They are the base of the pyramid whose apex is the killing of innocents such as Tanya and Olivia, and God knows how many more. We cannot say for sure precisely whose negligence helped bring these unforgivable deaths about. Simply, the law is so inattentive about such things as visibility, about the clutter of baubles on windscreens and the surface and design of our roads that very probably no prosecution could ever be successful in court, in these and so many comparable cases.
One question
Tanya died a needless, tragic death just four months after Olivia, both beside O'Connell Bridge, both on bicycles, both crushed by lorries: two families left to carry the insupportable weight of grief and mourning down the decades to come.
We can ask just one question. Not, "What will be done?" - because we absolutely know that nothing will be done. But instead: Who next? What family is going to hear the life of a blameless loved one has been crushed by the wheels of a lorry? How will it cope with the knowledge that the State's unremitting failure to create and enforce meaningful laws over lorries can mean only one thing: that the State actually regards such deaths as unimportant, and in effect, they are State policy?