A six-year-old girl died in Galway doing something that should be completely normal and safe, and it can be, but it’s a choice for society

Comment & Analysis: Along with every parent with young children across the country, I felt my heart lurch at the tragic news of Ula Grigaittyé, the six-year-old child who lost her life in Galway earlier this week. Ula was doing something that should be completely normal and completely unremarkable – she was out cycling with her father. It should also be something that’s completely safe.

And like any parent, very quickly, my thoughts turned to my own three boys at home. Our school is just under 2km away, on the other side of Tramore town, and we like to walk or cycle over on these bright dry mornings. I have them well-trained.

I tell them time and again to wait until the cars have fully stopped before setting foot on the pedestrian crossing (because all too often, drivers drive straight through without looking), and my younger two stay up on the paths when cycling, even if that means stopping and starting for pedestrians.

We wear the helmets that will honestly do very little in the case of a collision, we wear the high-vis, even if the sun is bright, and, surely to God, drivers should be alive enough to see kids in a school uniform this close to a school.

And I tell them, time and again, that what might be a small lapse on the part of a driver has the potential to have extremely serious consequences for them. The implicit message is that walking or cycling is dangerous, something that they have to be very careful when doing.

Because it is dangerous. This week’s tragedy, the latest in a long line, proves it.

But it shouldn’t be. It doesn’t need to be.

The movement in the Netherlands towards the safe cycling infrastructure the country is now famous for began back in the early 70s with the ‘Stop de Kindermoord’ protests – translating starkly to ‘Stop the Child Murder’. Just as the news of little Ula’s death made us heartsick, Dutch parents were sick of their roads and streets having fatal consequences for their most vulnerable users.

And they correctly identified where the blame lay – not on the children, nor their parents, for using their bikes or feet to get around their neighbourhoods under their own steam. Nor on the drivers, though they undoubtedly bear extra responsibility given the more serious consequences that come with larger, heavier, faster vehicles.

The real responsibility rests with a system of roads and streets that puts pedestrians, bikes, cars and trucks all into the one space. And the blame rests with a political system that not only allows that situation to continue, but also prioritises car and truck movements when making transport decisions.

I hope Ula’s dad understands that, that he didn’t do anything wrong in choosing to bring his child out for a spin on her bicycle. But I know that, were anything to happen to my kids on their way to and from school, I’d surely ask myself ‘what if?’ What if I’d driven them to school instead? What if, when they’d asked if they could cycle over to their friend’s house, I’d said no?

The design of our roads and streets should protect our children, not endanger them. It should enable them to navigate their neighbourhoods safely – to school, to the shops, to their friend’s house – independently and under their own stream, not restrict them to being ferried from place to place by their parents in cars.

It took people power to make that happen in the Netherlands. It took a mass movement of parents heart-sore and sick of being worried to death every time they let their children cycle home from school, waiting at the door to see them arrive home safely. It will take the same here. The alternative is to accept occasional tragedy as the price of road use. For me, that’s not an acceptable price to pay.

Marc Ó Cathasaigh is a safe streets advocate and a former TD for Waterford.