“The doctors couldn’t fix your daddy’s head. His brain is gone to sleep and they can’t wake it back up”
They were the words of a Dublin mother to her five children minutes after she returned from visiting her husband’s dead body at the morgue.
40 year old Mark Downey was knocked off his motorbike and killed by an SUV being driven by 70 year old Jack McNally, who last year was convicted of dangerous driving.
The court heard how his jeep had NO BRAKES and a number of other serious problems.
It was described by the gardai as the “worst vehicle they had tested in ten years” – it had failed an NCT test four years earlier yet it was still on the road.
Driver NcNally was spared jail.
Mark was on his way to buy a new motorbike when the collision happened and was flung into the air on the N2 Dublin to Derry road, tragically his helmet came off and he died from multiple internal head injuries.
Mark Downey’s dad Peter yesterday called for elderly drivers to be re-tested every three years, to ensure their re-actions, eyesight and general road-worthiness.
Peter joined Adrian Kennedy on 98FM's Dublin Talks on Thursday.
LISTEN to his heartbreaking interview, in full, by clicking play on the link below.
Dublin Talks with Adrian Kennedy and Jeremy Dixon, 98FM, weekday morning's between 10am and 12 noon.
