On June 12th, 2002, Mary Quinn, a young mother of five, was wheeling a buggy containing her infant daughter Siobhan (18 months), across a pedestrian crossing at Stillorgan shopping centre in Dublin. Half way over the crossing she was hit by a lorry, writes Kevin Myers
With the last deed of her young life, she managed to push Siobhan clear before she was crushed to death.
In time the lorry-driver was charged with "driving without due care and attention". Naturally, deferral of the trial followed deferral. Eight separate hearings occurred, with members of Michael and Mary's family's present at them all. Anyone vaguely acquainted with our courts will know that they function with sublime disregard for the inconvenience or emotional trauma of families of the dead.
Finally, on the ninth hearing, last April, a trial was begun in Blackrock District Court under Judge Clare Leonard. She heard the prosecution case, and then ruled that there was no more time for the defence to be heard - that would occur on another day. As it happened, that "other day" was the following October. Hence the two parts to the trial were separated by six months.
Three witnesses gave evidence in the prosecution; two testified that Mary was on the pedestrian crossing when she was hit. A third, a car-driver who was in front of the lorry, said the lorry driver had sounded his horn repeatedly at him as he had passed through the crossing. However, he did not see the impact.
The driver agreed he had sounded his horn at the car-driver shortly before he drove over and killed Mary Quinn, and claimed he did not see her. An engineer from London testified for the defence that there was indeed a blind spot in front of the driver.
Having heard the two sides of the case, separated by half a year, Judge Clare Leonard, on the basis of all the evidence adduced before her, found the driver not guilty of driving without due care and attention.
This is an interesting judgment. The driver chose to drive a vehicle in which he must have been aware that there were areas immediately in front of him which he could not see. Was his decision to drive such a vehicle not in itself proof that he was not showing enough care and attention to other road users - the slow, the infirm and mothers with buggies in particular?
This column has now dealt with three separate cases of young woman who were killed by slowly moving lorries with blind spots. One was the doctor Julia Potterton, who was killed three years ago on her bicycle by a lorry turning left at the Aston Quay-O'Connell Bridge junction in Dublin. The coroner's court was told by the driver that he could not have seen Julia if she was ahead of his front mirrors.
The second was Nicole Naumburger, the German au pair who was killed in Cork by a lorry emerging from a supermarket. Nicole was pushing a buggy, and was unable to to get clear of the lorry before it killed her. She was, however, able to save baby Maeve. The inquest into her death was told that because of packages on the passenger seat the driver had a severely restricted view of the area immediately in front of the left side of the vehicle.
In neither of these killings did the DPP think the deaths worthy of trials. And we know what happened when a driver was charged - 10 court appearances, six months between prosecution case and defence, followed by acquittal.
Some might say that the life and death of Mary Quinn, mother of five, RIP, were shown due regard and respect by the courts. And others might disagree.
So this is the position. We are allowing on our roads lorries whose drivers cannot see immediately in front of them. If you are nimble, you will probably get out of their way. If you are not, if you are a cyclist, or a woman with a buggy, or if you are old, or infirm, the lorry will driver over and crush at 5 m.p.h., and you die. And it is not illegal.
How is this? How is it remotely acceptable that lorries can be licensed to drive in public places when they have this murderous killing zone immediately in front of them? A factory which tolerated such danger would be closed down - so why is it acceptable on our roads? There are two aspects to this. The lorry manufacturers are making lorries with this lethal design fault. They must surely be answerable in civil courts for the deaths that result. The second aspect is what the Government is doing about these lorries - which to date is nothing.
Why does the Minister for Transport not make it legally mandatory for all lorries to be equipped with mirrors to eliminate such blind spots? This is not a contentious issue; indeed its common sense defies all counter-argument. To ease their way into law, let us call them Cullen mirrors.
Thus there are mothers with buggies who will pass uncrushed into old age and grandmotherhood if these mirrors became statutorily standard on all vehicles on Irish roads. For we may predict from the deaths of Julia, Mary and Nicole that other slow-moving people are actuarially certain to die because the State has so far not acted against these mobile murder-zones.
So here, now, is a chance for the Minister to save those who will be forever unknown. And the reasons for not acting - aside from laziness or indifference - are what, precisely?