Left as ‘roadkill’: Cork woman speaks on her ordeal as victim of a hit-and-run incident
In David Relaxing Keane Kinsale, Her Keating Cork At Olivia Co Picture: Home
The last thing on Olivia Keating’s mind early one sunny morning before work was that she would be “a piece of roadkill” left for dead in a ditch.
“Nobody for one second thinks they are going to be the next victim,” she says as she reflects back on the morning that changed her life forever.
Memory of what happened that day in 2016 is patchy at best. But she remembers the car and its colour — something she could probably only have clocked as she was flying through the air and had instinctively turned her head towards the road.
This is because she was cycling along a straight stretch of the N71 between Bandon and Clonakilty, Co Cork, when she was struck from behind.
The force of the impact propelled her headfirst into a speed limit sign, which she bounced off before she hit a stone wall and crumpled to the ground in a heap.
The pre-hospital emergency critical care physician Dr Jason van der Velde, one of the doctors who helped save her life, was so shocked by her injuries he later told her he was not sure she would survive.
Read More
Her injuries included more than 27 fractures to her face and a broken back. The handlebars of her own bike went through her left leg, which still has “chunks of it missing”.
She required hundreds of stitches and suffered fractures to her arms, her legs, her pelvis, and ribs.
“There must have been a lot of blood,” she said. “My face was in pieces, and Dr Jason later said ‘I’ll never forget your face’.”
Although she has no memory of the actual impact, she does remember the colour and type of car.
“I can remember seeing the car but it's more of a hazy thing, like a memory that came afterwards. My last proper memory just before I was hit was cycling through a town called Ballinascarthy, and I remember thinking ‘I’m going to get a great tan’.
“I’d say I was out of it very, very quickly. So, I would have just seen that car but it is something I don’t want to remember.
“But I do remember having a feeling of being cold when I was on the ground. I don’t remember any of the rescue services that were there.
There are also other scars from the collision.
“I felt like a bit of roadkill,” she said. "That is something I am going to have to live with and that is another thing people don’t understand about hit-and-run victims.
“When it happens, it is like you’re not worth saving, and that is incredibly hard to deal with.
“You often wonder about the driver: ‘why didn’t you help me’? ‘Why was I not worth it?’ I wasn’t a bad person, but why was I left there?’.”
Her words of advice to anybody getting behind the wheel of a car today?
“It is not just this lovely automobile that can get you from A to B,” she said. "It is also something that can kill or maim somebody for life and cause them to suffer for the rest of their life.
“We all need to be far more aware that there are other drivers out there, and pedestrians, and cyclists and people out running.
“People also need to be far more predictive in the way they drive, slowing down round corners and trying to pre-empt risks they could face.
“People also need to get rid of the distractions in their cars like phones and screens and just focus on the road and take what they are doing more seriously.
“There is a recklessness that has crept into driving and risks are being taken by people who simply refuse to realise the consequences of the risks to other drivers from what risks they are taking.”