a terrible question

Every year thousands of drivers experience the trauma of knowing that they have caused the death of another person. For many of them, says Kelly Connor, the nature of this trauma is too vast, too unknown and too dreadful to contemplate

A FEW YEARS ago I happened to overhear a radio interview that described a new service to provide counsellor-led debriefings to bus and train drivers who'd been involved in fatal collisions with pedestrians. My ears pricked up because at age 17, I too had caused the death of a pedestrian. My 'collision' had occurred 25 years earlier when no such debriefings existed, but after hearing the radio interview I knew that I still needed debriefing so I went in search of such a counsellor. To my surprise, the very first counsellor I contacted claimed to be able to provide exactly what I needed.

'The morning after the accident was pretty bad,' I told her. 'At home, during the rush getting ready for work and school, nobody spoke a word about the horrors of the day before. I was rostered to start work at 8.30am, which meant I was catching the same train as my mother. I don't remember whether we talked on our way to the station; perhaps we made small talk, but nothing more. On the train I felt better being surrounded by anonymous people, it eased the pressure of being amongst people who 'knew'. But while glancing at a newspaper held by another passenger I saw an article describing the accident. When I saw my name printed there, I instantly felt sick. A spinning, whirring sensation filled my head and I felt as though I was in a different dimension of time and space. It was horrible, I was screaming inside, but couldn't really be sure that I wasn't also screaming outside.'

We'd already had several sessions together and I was beginning to feel very comfortable about opening up to her. However, when I'd finished telling her about the train incident, she tilted her head to the side, leaned forward, sighed a little, and said, 'That's what we call a false memory. That incident couldn't have happened; it just feels like it did.'

'What do you mean?' I asked, in shock.

'Well, you were only 17 at the time, which means the newspaper could not have identified you. Minors are legally protected from being publicly named so it couldn't have happened.'

'But it did,' I spluttered, 'I remember it so clearly.'

'I'm not saying you're making it up deliberately,' she said. 'It obviously feels very real to you, and so we need to work with those feelings, but we also need to be quite clear about what's actually real and what's not.'

'It was real, I know it was. It was as real as you and I sitting in this room.'

'Let me tell you how false memory works,' she said. 'You were probably sitting on the train that morning imagining how terrible it would be to see your name in the paper. This imagined fear became so strong that it actually began to feel real. Then, once you begin to feel something so intensely, it easily becomes imbedded as a memory. That's all that has happened to you. It's nothing to feel ashamed of; it's just part of the trauma. Don't worry,' she said smilingly, 'we can fix it.'

She was so unshakeably certain of her facts that I lost the power to defend myself. What if she was right, I asked myself? What else might I have imagined into my memory? Could I trust any part of my story to be accurate?

Many times over the previous 25 years I'd sought professional help in coming to terms with the enormous shame and guilt of causing somebody's death; all my previous attempts had been failures, but this was the hardest defeat of all. It had simply never occurred to me that my memory of the events might be doubted, let alone starkly declared false. The shock of her assertion was so profound that I was speechless. There was nothing else for me to do than rise from the chair, depart silently, and never return.

For the next six months I carried the shock of that encounter deep within myself until, eventually, I accepted that there was only one way to deal with the matter. I would have to put my memory to the test by turning to the newspaper archives. If my memory was right the archives would prove it. If not I'd have some serious mental health issues to confront.

This is a reproduction of the original article.

It's not possible to know in advance the effect of trauma of this magnitude. If I'd been asked to speculate on how I might respond to this situation, I would have said something fatuous like, 'If it was a stranger who died, I would feel very sorry about it, but I'd just have to get on with my life. After all, what would be the point of upsetting myself over the death of somebody I didn't even know?'

I would also have rationalised the question of guilt with an easy dismissal along the lines of: 'If you drive a car, or cross a road, you know there is always risk involved. These kinds of accidents can happen anywhere at anytime. So long as there is no malice or intent or gross negligence like drunkenness involved, then it's just an unfortunate accident. Get over it.'

However, my experience of the event proved to be completely different. I may not have incurred any physical injuries but my soul was gashed wide open and my mind was tormented beyond endurance. The journey of recovery has been long, arduous, lonely, and painful. Many of the people I turned to for help were unable to offer it, mostly because the nature of this trauma is too vast, too unknown, and too dreadful to contemplate. Few books are written on the subject, and few people speak about it.

During the 30 years that have passed since my accident, a further 51,709 British pedestrians have died, as well as 16,071 Australian pedestrians, and 174,546 American pedestrians. Which means that in these three countries alone, almost 250,000 drivers have experienced the trauma of knowing that they were directly involved in the death of another human being. Many of those drivers will be completely innocent of legal or criminal liability, yet just knowing that they were involved in the death of another person will have left an indelible mark upon the psyche.

I wrote my book (To cause a death, Clairview 2004) in an attempt to describe the effect on my life of carrying this indelible mark. It describes the horror, the guilt, the shame, the consequences, the tormenting questions, and ultimately the opportunity that it offered, or perhaps demanded, to reappraise my life and my values.

However, in the year since publication, a question that I have suspected, but dreaded, has made itself apparent. The question gnawing away at me is this; has a human calamity of dreadful proportions been slowly, silently, taking place in front of our eyes for decades without anybody noticing?

This terrible question began to form in my mind after a feature article in The Daily Telegraph about my memoir prompted extraordinary interest from other media outlets around the UK. I was courted and feted with chauffeur driven cars, flights, and five-star accommodation just so that people around Britain could hear my story. Numerous times I recounted the awful circumstances of causing the death of a pedestrian when I was 17 years old. Repeatedly, I described the catastrophic impact this had on my life, and on my family.

It could have been unendurably harrowing, but it wasn't because it quickly became apparent that the interest was sparked by genuine desire to know something about an occurrence that, while not usually spoken of, casts its dark shadow over most of us. Time and again interviewers uttered exactly the same phrase that Judith Woods first used in the Telegraph article, 'There but for the grace of God…'

Woods asked, 'Can there be many drivers who haven't had a narrow escape from Connor's fate? Who haven't been left, shaken, head buzzing with 'what ifs'?' The answer wasn't long in coming. I heard many stories of near-misses, some from journalists themselves, but soon enough I also began to hear stories about, and from, the drivers who hadn't escaped my fate.

A young woman spoke to me about her best friend's mother, 'She just never got over it; it wasn't even her fault but she just couldn't forgive herself. Twelve years later, still sick with grief, she killed herself.'

Another wrote, 'I had an experience where a young boy of nine ran in front of my car and died at the scene. I have had exactly the same feelings for the last 20 yrs, waiting for the 'payback time'. I divorced two years ago, I was never able to find the 'me' before the accident.'

The honesty and willingness with which these stories were shared touched me so deeply that I felt validated in breaking the silence about the effect of causing accidental death. My initial response was, 'Thank God, there ARE other people like me who don't know how to deal with this horror. I'm not alone; I'm not peculiar in how this has affected me.' And then, the stories just kept coming and coming.

'My uncle died three years after a child ran out in front of him; he simply had no will to go on, he became unreachable, uncommunicative, he simply let himself slip into death.'

'My sister is in a trauma unit, under heavy sedation to prevent her making another suicide attempt. When the pedestrian died, something also died in her. How can I help her?'

'Three of my school mates went joy-riding, two were brothers, but the car skidded and hit a tree. Only the driver, one of the brothers, survived. The two families lived in the same street, my street, they used to be good friends, but not any more. The drivers' family tore themselves apart with grief and recrimination. It was horrible to watch; but what could you do?'

The awful answer is we don't know, there is no research to tell us. In the many years since my accident I haven't found another first-hand account describing this experience, nor any academic or professional material. Instead all we have is the spectacle of hapless individuals like Gary Hart, the driver who fell asleep while driving and caused the Selby train crash. Convicted in 2001 of 10 charges of death by dangerous driving and sentenced to five years in prison, Hart was released after serving half of his sentence. The media often reported that he felt no remorse.

Is it really possible to feel no remorse for causing accidental death? I asked an expert, PC Colin Parry of Cheltenham Police, who trains the Police family liaison officers who have the task of informing families about deaths and accidents. PC Parry said the original Telegraph article had raised his awareness about the welfare of drivers who cause fatalities. 'I've laminated the article and attached it to the wall, with a large heading, Remember the driver! Too often we forget to ask ourselves, is the driver a victim too? The majority of these drivers are engulfed with complex thoughts and feelings. Nothing is simple in these situations.'

Almost 52,000 pedestrians have died in Britain since my accident in 1971; it is a sickeningly high number. The trauma to the family of the dead is immense, of that there can be no doubt. Yet we know almost nothing about the effect of these deaths on the 52,000 drivers and their families. It's time we found out.