The 22-year-old cyclist who was killed in a traffic collision in Dún Laoghaire has been named locally as Greta Price-Martin.
Ms Price-Martin was killed at rush-hour on Wednesday morning in a collision involving a truck at the junction where Glenageary Road Upper, Mounttown Road Lower and Kill Avenue converge.
The notoriously dangerous junction was due to be upgraded this year, Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council has confirmed.
Ms Price-Martin, who is originally from Templetown, Cooley, Co Louth, had just finished her first year as a film student in the Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art and Design (IADT) and had started work in film production. She was cycling to work when she was struck by the lorry.
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Ms Price-Martin is the daughter of Breffni Martin and Vanessa Price. Her paternal grandfather was the well-known UCD academic and Seanad member Professor Augustine Martin, who was known for editing the Leaving Cert English book ‘Soundings’. She is a also great-granddaughter of The O’Rahilly, who died during the Easter Rising, on her mother’s side.
In a note on RIP.ie, her family said she would be “deeply missed by her devastated sister Ruth, brothers Jack and Louis, partner Charlie, and her parents, Breffni and Vanessa, grandmother, aunts, uncles, cousins and wider family and friends”.
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“Greta had just finished her first year at IADT and just started her first job in film production, with everything ahead of her,” it said.
“She will live on in the hearts and minds of her many family and friends.”
The junction in question used to be a roundabout, but has been changed in recent years with new sets of traffic lights. Five roads converge on the junction - the other two being Highthorn Park and Oliver Plunkett Road.
Flexible cycle lane bollards which had been a dividing line between motorists and cyclists at the junction had been removed recently.
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council confirmed that there are plans to have segregated lanes between cyclists and motorists at the junction in question. The scheme is out to tender and works will commence next year.
The collision which claimed Ms Price-Martin’s life occurred at around 8am and was witnessed by many people.
Local resident Eoghan Morrissey said the woman was taking a slight left after the traffic lights at Mounttown Road Lower in the direction up the hill to Glenageary Road Upper. A large three-axle dumper truck was travelling in the same direction.
A first responder on a motorbike stopped as did a nurse in a car. Ms Price-Martin was taken to St Vincent’s Hospital but died a short time afterwards.
Justine McCaffrey, who lives across the road from the scene of the collision, said there are regular incidents at the junction in question. “When I heard the noise, I didn’t come out because we always hear stuff here. You will hear people shouting at each other. Then I realised it was more serious than that,” she said.
Local resident Sinead Switzer said the junction has always been “notoriously unsafe and super dangerous” and she has problems navigating it.
She added that the building of a new cycle lane in Deansgrange is also diverting a lot more traffic through the junction.
Cycling lobby group I Bike Dublin spokesman Stephen McManus said flexible cycle lane bollards which had been a dividing line between motorists and cyclists at the junction have been removed in the last year from the location.
He also pointed out that the majority of cycling deaths in Dublin have occurred in cases where HGV lorries turn left and there needs to be greater awareness of this issue.
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