The inquest has taken place into the death of a young Thurles mother who was killed on her way to hospital to see her baby when a truck collided with the back of a car in which she was a passenger.
The Coroner said it highlighted the need for truck-drivers to take appropriate rest periods and avoid fatigue.
A garda technical expert who examined the stretch of the M8 near New Inn where Nicola Kenny was killed in 2016 concluded that “driver error” by a truck driver contributed to the fatal collision.
The car in which the 26 year old was a back-seat passenger, with her aunt driving and her mother in the front seat, was stopped on the hard shoulder when a lorry approaching from behind collided with it, sending it down a grass embankment and killing the young woman instantly.
An inquest in Clonmel found that she died as a result of multiple traumatic injuries consistent with a road traffic collision and accidental death.
The inquest heard that the truck had been seen driving in an erratic fashion before the crash.
The driver of the truck, Ciaran McBride from Keady in Co Armagh, was given a suspended prison sentence at Clonmel Circuit Court last year after he pleaded guilty to careless driving causing death.
Nicola Kenny – who was from Kennedy Park in Thurles – was being driven to Temple Street Hospital in Dublin to visit her new baby daughter, who had been transferred to Temple Street from South Tipperary General Hospital in Clonmel for medical attention.
Her aunt who was driving the Ford Focus had pulled into the hard shoulder to allow Nicola take a call from Temple Street to tell her the baby was fine.
Coroner Paul Morris said that the case “really highlights that lorry drivers should obey their tachograph and take their rest”‘
