The Scotsman
This article appeared in The Scotsman on Thursday the 22nd of July, 2004.
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Long road to redemption when you take a life through driving
By ANNA SMYTHSOMETIMES, an accident is just that - accidental. And even though the consequences are horrific, the person who caused it only made a mistake that you and I could make every day. A momentary lapse of concentration while you flick through radio stations. A fly landing on the windscreen. A worry about work that leaves you slamming on the brakes, just in time.
Kelly Connor didn’t brake in time. As a 17-year-old driver, she took her eyes off the road for a second and turned back to see Margaret Healy in the middle of a pedestrian crossing. They crashed. Healy died. Connor walked away. Now aged 50, she has written a book, To Cause a Death, about the ordeal of being a survivor.
Of course, on that summer’s day in Perth, Australia, Connor didn’t just walk away. She ran to Healy’s side and did as best she could to administer first aid. But despite her efforts, the 77-year-old woman died later in hospital. Connor was inconsolable, and even though all around her - including the police - assured her she wasn’t to blame, she could never forgive herself.
“I’m not claiming to be a victim,” says the speech and drama student from her Sussex home, “nor do I want sympathy - just an opportunity to explain how a chance mistake can damage everyone involved in a road accident, not just the injured parties.”
The damage to Connor’s own family has been catastrophic. Her relationships with her siblings and parents never fully recovered, and the release of this book will no doubt renew those painful memories.
But her book is needed. The most recent figures available show that 3,431 people were killed on Britain’s roads in 2002, and a further 35,976 seriously injured. The government’s heavily marketed THINK! campaigns attempt to reveal the reality of car accidents, and ask us to “Kill our speed, not a child”. But with more than 20,000 deaths caused by drink driving in 2002 - the highest figure since 1990 - and seven out of ten drivers admitting to regular speeding, it appears we simply aren’t listening. Perhaps Connor’s real-life story will get our attention.
It is a fascinating read. Not in the way a murderer’s diary would be, for this death was not a premeditated, violent event. It is a “there-but-for-the-grace-of-God” tale. As she recounts the accident itself, it is all too easy to imagine yourself in that driver’s seat and then living out the woeful consequences. It is tempting never to get behind the wheel again. Thirty-three years on, Connor still hasn’t.
The Connor family was changed on that Sunday morning in 1971. Having moved to Australia from the UK six years earlier, they had settled into a happy life. The 17-year-old borrowed her dad’s car to get to work, so he could stay at home and celebrate her younger sister’s birthday.
Connor was alone at the scene of the accident. The police were very helpful, or at least they tried to be. They guided her away from the scene and asked her to recount the event. When they questioned how fast she had been driving, she answered truthfully, 45mph, knowing full well that was 10mph above the speed limit. Having risen to the top of a hill, she had been slow to come off the accelerator and was going that little bit too fast.
At the police station, the officer’s attempts to help were confusing. He repeated his questions about her actual speed and the legal limit until she got the point. Eventually she responded with: “I think I was going at 35mph,” to which he said: “Good.”
THE POLICEMAN’S well-meaning lenience was the beginning of a long path of unhelpful responses. “No-one knew how to react,” says Connor, “but they all tried in their way to do the right thing. That policeman obviously thought there was no point in ruining two lives, but it meant that for many years afterwards I couldn’t live with the guilt of lying.”
When she says she “couldn’t live”, she isn’t exaggerating. Years later, she went back to that police station in a tearful attempt to put the record straight. The officers gave her tea and sympathy before sending her away, still carrying the burden having taken a life. After drifting from job to job and town to town, 19-year-old Connor decided there really was only one way to “move on”.
During a voluntary six-week admission to a psychiatric hospital, both doctors and counsellors had insisted that she should simply forgive herself. Even Healy’s brother had visited to say he bore no grudge. But Connor needed to hear it from the one person who could truly absolve, and so she went to her favourite beach, a bottle of sleeping pills in hand.
“I woke up in the hospital three days later, absolutely broken,” she says. “I had thought that by lying on a beach I would ensure my success and end this torment. If the pills didn’t get me, the exposure would. But actually, the fact I was so cold was the one thing that encouraged the paramedics to try resuscitation. When I came round, I was bitterly disappointed.”
Time didn’t heal Connor’s wounds. Her mother was particularly keen that the accident should never be spoken of, a coping strategy that, Connor thinks, may have contributed to the disintegration of their family ties. Her father, who had planned to drop Connor off that morning, never forgave himself for staying at home. Six months after the accident, he moved out. He died in 1981, never re-establishing their former close relationship.
“I am not very close to my mother and sister, and my brother died 12 years ago from cancer,” says Connor. “It is still very painful and will probably never get easier. The most important thing, though, is that my daughter, Meegan, is close to her aunt and grandmother.”
Meegan, now 22, played a crucial role in the recovery process. Connor had been married to Paul, a fireman she met during a trip to London, for three years when she fell pregnant in 1981, but the relationship was already under strain. Unable to tell him fully about the ordeal, Connor struggled to play what she called “the game”.
She explains: “By the time I met him I was acutely aware that I simply couldn’t tell people about the accident. After my suicide attempt, it was made obvious that if I carried on down that path I would be locked up in a mental hospital for a very long time. That thought was too horrendous, so I did a very good act of pretending that I’d moved on.”
The marriage broke down when Meegan was two years old, but in the years that followed, Connor found healing in the experience of motherhood. Up until that point she had struggled to find a sense of meaning or value. Then, when Meegan was four years old, she had what she calls “an awakening” as she watched her daughter sleep. “I suddenly realised that I did have a purpose, and for the first time I was overwhelmed with real gratitude for my life and for my beautiful daughter.”
IT TOOK A further ten years for Connor to explain the accident fully to her daughter, whose understanding and acceptance capped the long road to recovery and encouraged Connor to facilitate change. “There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that this is a huge trauma, but there are no papers, studies or recovery programmes available. I hope that this book might kick-start that process so that others don’t have to struggle on their own.”
“Personally, my experiences of counselling and psychiatry were not at all helpful, and I want to prevent that being the case for anyone else.”
So far the book has received a warm welcome from both the mental health profession and wider public. “I had no idea how many people would associate with my story, either because of their own heart-stopping near misses or those of people they know,” says Connor.
“Now I can accept this is as a part of my identity. It has to be woven into the fabric of who I am. I can honestly look back now and see that it has given me great gifts despite the enormous pain for all concerned. It feels surreal to say it, but it has been a great teacher.”
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