I was paralysed after being hit by a car... now I teach road safety in schools
– INSPIRATIONAL LAUREN DOHERTY ON HER INCREDIBLE CHARITY WORK
I want to show however low you’ve gone there is always a way back
It was the split second that changed eight lives for ever. Aged just 20 when she stepped in front of a van without looking, Lauren Doherty was left paralysed from the neck down and no one thought she would survive.
In that moment, everyone from the first police officer at the scene, to the friend she was with, her anaesthetist, the van driver – who was not at fault – an eyewitness, her parents and her little brothers had their lives turned upside down.
Catapulted 30 metres through the air and landing face down, she clung on to life, but the ambulance crew feared she would die during the four-minute journey to hospital.
In a wheelchair and reliant on breathing apparatus after a broken neck, spinal cord injury, shattered pelvis and catastrophic damage to her aorta, she is now 36 and has turned her tragedy into a force for good.
Alongside her best friend Rebecca Blunstone, Lauren, from Harrogate, North Yorkshire, has set up charity Road Safety Talks which sees her touring the country giving firsthand presentations to school children.
Lauren, who has now shared her story with 12,000 pupils, is keen to let people know about “the ripple effect” a road accident has.
She says: “It’s not just me whose life was irreversibly changed, it’s the emergency service workers who saved my life, it’s my parents who are now my carers, it’s the people left utterly traumatised after witnessing the crash.”
Lauren is so inspirational that in 2021 she was awarded a British Empire Medal in the late Queen’s birthday honours for services to education and was also invited to the King’s Coronation.
“That was a bit of a pinch-me moment. It was really humbling,” she says. But it has taken time and considerable effort to become the woman we see today.
She confesses: “I wasn’t happy for a very long time. I didn’t have therapy but talking to people about it is my therapy now.
“I have a focus now. It gives me a reason to get up. I’m glad I’ve been able to build something positive out of it. “When I get messages from parents saying their child has started holding their hand near roads, I think I have
LAUREN DOHERTY ROAD SMASH SURVIVOR
done my job. Sometimes children get upset, but I’ve never had a parent say they don’t want their child in the talks. pe we’re saving lives.”
Lauren’s result of horrific her stepping injuries out are in a front of a van without looking while making her way home with a friend from a night out to see a matte’s band in August 2008. The crash was witnessed by her friend and a postal worker about to beg in his rounds – who was so trauma-ties he was signed off work for weeks. "The first officer on the scene said they thought they were going to a dead body,” says Lauren. “She held my hand while waiting for the ambulance, but didn’t expect me to make it. I don’t remember the crash. I remember going to the gig, then waking up in hospital a week later, surrounded by tubes and machines.
“My mum and dad told me what happened. My dad told me I’d never breathe by myself again. I stared at the ceiling and the tears streamed down my face.”
After 16 months in Leeds General Hospital and rehab centres – defying expectations by functioning for periods without a ventilator – Lauren was allowed to return to her parents’ home.
They had their new kitchen ripped out to create an accessible living area for her. Both had also been given extensive medical training, so they could help look after Lauren alongside carers.
“I had no focus or purpose,” she says. “I was only 20, but my friends had all but disappeared. I’d lost my career, working in a school, and was just existing.”
But, after developing a close bond with Rebecca, who owned the company that provided care to Lauren, her life changed.
“Rebecca asked me, if something positive could come out of it, what it would be. I instantly replied, ‘For it not to happen to anyone else.’” With that, the pair organised for Lauren to go into Rebecca’s children’s school to give a talk on road safety. In 2016, she launched the charity.
She says: “The talks are a bit more hard-hitting for older children.
“I talk to them about the ripple effect and tell them I used to love doing my makeup, but now I have to rely on my carers doing it for me.
“I have no privacy. My room has a 24-hour baby monitor in it, in case I fall out of bed.”
Lauren also delivers talks to prisoners – not on road safety, but on personal resilience.
“I want to show people however low you think you have gone, there’s always a way back,” she says.