The family of a Dublin cyclist killed in a horrifying collision with a HGV driver, after which it took ten days to formally identify his body, have called for urgent action to improve the city’s cycling infrastructure and reduce the dangers posed by lorries to vulnerable road users.

Derek Doyle was cycling home from his job as an usher at the Irish parliament in Leinster House, just days before Christmas last year, when he was fatally struck by a left-turning lorry driver in Castleknock, five miles west of Dublin city centre.

An investigation into the circumstances surrounding the cyclist’s death is currently ongoing. However, speaking to RTE this week, Derek’s wife Tania and daughter Hazel-Lynn say they know he was killed when he was hit by a HGV driver turning left onto the narrow College Road in the village of Castleknock, ending up under the lorry’s wheels.

“Derek was cycling through the junction and was hit by a lorry. And he was run over on his bicycle and found under the left-hand wheel of the lorry,” Tania, an independent councillor on Fingal County Council, said.

Derek’s body was so severely damaged in the collision that it took ten days for him to be formally identified, a wait his family described as “traumatic”. He was finally identified after Hazel-Lynn provided a lock of hair and a saliva sample, enabling DNA match to be made.

“That’s something that will never leave me,” she said. “To have to give a piece of yourself to identify your dad is something nobody should ever have to do.”

“We had to have a closed coffin. So, we never got to say goodbye,” Tania added.

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And now, eight months on from Derek’s death, Tania and Hazel-Lynn are calling on the authorities in Ireland to create cycling infrastructure that is “fit for purpose”, while also urging the government to introduce measures designed to eliminate blind spots for HGV drivers.

In particular, Tania and Hazel-Lynn believe that the junction in Castleknock where Derek was killed should be urgently addressed.

Turn onto College Road, Castleknock, Co. Dublin
Turn onto College Road, Castleknock, Co (Image Credit: Google Maps)

While most of Derek’s commute home through the city centre and Pheonix Park is served by recently introduced protected cycle lanes, the city’s safe cycling network ends in Castleknock village. There, an unprotected, painted bike lane leads to the junction where he was killed, a tight left-hand turn onto College Road.

Tania believes that the route is unsuitable for HGV drivers, who frequently struggle to navigate the turn, and that measures should be taken to make the junction safer for cyclists.

When RTE’s Prime Time monitored the junction on 29 August, they witnessed one lorry driver struggling to make it around the corner, mounting the footpath in the process.

The junction’s advanced stop box for cyclists at the traffic lights, Tania says, is also frequently encroached by motorists. This assertion was backed up by Prime Time’s spell on the street, the programme finding that they witnessed the “majority of traffic” stopping in the bike box (an assessment tellingly supported by Google’s Street View function).

Castleknock junction onto College Road
Castleknock junction onto College Road (Image Credit: Google Maps)

However, in the aftermath of Derek’s death, Fingal County Council carried out a standard collision report, concluding that the junction is “safe for all road users”.

The local authority, of which Tania is a member, also says it has no plans to make changes to the junction or to restrict HGV drivers from turning left onto College Road.

However, Hazel-Lynn believes that the village’s infrastructure shortcomings are responsible for her father’s death and need to be addressed.

“They want you to be fit for the economy and use cycle to work scheme, [but] roads have to be safe. If the roads aren’t fit for purpose and the infrastructure isn’t fit for purpose, look what’s happening,” she said.

A former member of the Irish Army, Derek served in Lebanon before joining the Irish Air Corps. As a military man, Hazel-Lynn says her father “did everything by the book” while cycling. According to Hazel-Lynn, he was “lit up like a Christmas tree” on his bike and stopped for every red light.

However, despite “doing everything right”, Hazel-Lynn argued that the lack of safe cycling infrastructure ultimately cost him his life.

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Meanwhile, though the exact circumstances of his death are yet to be established, the family are also calling for safety measures eliminating blind spots for lorry drivers to be implemented.

In 2021, Transport for London introduced its Direct Vision Standard (DVS) lorry safety scheme, effectively removing the most dangerous lorries, and those with the least vision, from the roads and encouraging operators to adhere to the highest levels of safety.

While there are currently no plans to introduce similar regulations in Ireland, European Union rules will prohibit the sale of new HGVs with blind spots from 2029.

However, Tania insists that far more needs to be done, and soon.

“Trucks on the road need to be safe. If there are blind spots, in particular on the left-hand side, your truck is not safe,” she said.

“And if all it takes is to put extra sensors on the side of the truck, and particularly on the front of the truck as well, that’s not a big deal.”

Tania said that their family has been “in a black hole” since Derek was killed, as they attempt to “deal with the trauma and then the grief”, while Hazel-Lynn is adamant that no other family should have to go through what they’ve experienced over the past eight months.

“We’re reliving what’s happened every day,” she said. “I feel like I’m hamster on a hamster wheel, and I’m running around. But there’s no end. It’s not life without Dad. It’s not.”

> Cyclist frustrated by police inaction after being “nearly killed” by lorry driver, as rider told he was in “blind spot” and driver in company vehicle can’t be traced

By calling for safer roads and HGV measures, the Doyle family joins the parents of Emma Burke Newman, a cyclist killed after being hit and dragged for over 50 metres by a lorry driver in Glasgow, in highlighting the dual dangers of large vehicles and poor infrastructure for cyclists.

In March last year, 69-year-old HGV driver Paul Mowat was sentenced to 100 hours of unpaid community work under police supervision and banned from driving for 12 months after admitting to driving without due care and attention or without reasonable consideration for other persons using the road, following the collision that killed cyclist Emma, a 22-year-old American-French student studying architecture at Glasgow School of Art, in January 2023.

Emma Burke Newman (Pedal on Parliament)
Emma Burke Newman (Pedal on Parliament) (Image Credit: Farrelly Atkinson)

Footage played at Glasgow Sheriff Court showed lorry driver Mowat, along with another bus driver, encroach beyond an Advanced Stop Line (ASL) at a set of traffic lights at the junction of Broomielaw and Oswald Street on Glasgow’s King George V Bridge.

Emma can then be seen moving into the first lane, passing Mowat’s lorry, the windscreen and mirrors of which were dirty at the time, on the nearside.

However, as they both set off, Mowat turned left, hitting the cyclist’s pannier rack, causing her to fall and dragging her under the lorry for 53 metres. The 22-year-old was rushed to hospital, where she died the following morning from her injuries.

Following Mowat’s sentencing, Emma’s parents, Rose Marie Burke and John Newman, said the junction where her daughter was killed was an “accident waiting to happen”, and that they were working with Glasgow City Council to install safer infrastructure in the area.

They also encouraged more people to ride bikes as part of a “virtuous cycle” to make the roads safer, amid a broader call for safer infrastructure and more awareness of vulnerable road users by motorists.