{"id":631663,"date":"2026-09-21T18:42:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T18:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/631663\/"},"modified":"2026-09-21T18:42:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T18:42:11","slug":"car-reached-165km-h-before-womans-fatal-crash-in-dublin-suburbs-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/631663\/","title":{"rendered":"Car reached 165km\/h before woman\u2019s fatal crash in Dublin suburbs \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

An open verdict has been recorded at an inquest into the death of a Dublin<\/a> woman whose car travelled at 165km\/h along a suburban road before crashing into five vehicles. <\/p>\n

Dublin District Coroner Clare Keane recorded the verdict in relation to Elizabeth Veitch Smyth (84), whose Kia Nero crashed at Hillside Drive, Rathfarnham<\/a>, Dublin 14<\/a>, on September 11th, 2024.<\/p>\n

Veitch Smyth, of Taney Rise, Dundrum<\/a>, suffered fatal injuries in the crash and was pronounced dead at the scene. <\/p>\n

The inquest heard her vehicle hit a \u2018box van\u2019 and then an Audi Q7, a Volkswagen Passat, a Volkswagen ID4 and a BMW 1. The Audi was overturned by the impact of the collision. <\/p>\n

Commercial driver Stephen Noonan said he was driving his van along Hillside Drive when he saw Veitch Smyth\u2019s green-coloured Kia coming towards him at speed. <\/p>\n

He said the car was partially on his side of the road and he pulled his vehicle to the left. However, the Kia hit the rear side of his vehicle before travelling on and crashing into the Audi. <\/p>\n

The Audi hit an electricity pole and turned upside down in the street after being struck by the Kia, which travelled on, hitting other vehicles, stopping only after it crashed into the back of the parked BMW. <\/p>\n

Noonan said he got out of his van and immediately called the emergency services. He said, based on his knowledge of cars, he estimated the Kia was travelling at 160km\/h. Garda forensic collision examiners later put the speed of the Kia at 165km\/h. <\/p>\n

Building worker Rob Miller told the inquest he was sitting in his car taking a break from a nearby site and saw the Kia travelling at \u201castronomical speed\u201d. He said his Honda was hit by debris but was not struck by the Kia, which he described as \u201cping-ponging off other cars\u201d. <\/p>\n

Garda<\/a> forensic officers gave evidence that video footage taken from cameras on the front and back of the box van indicated the first collision happened at 10.34am. The Kia then travelled 57.7m in 1.29 seconds before hitting the Audi. <\/p>\n

It was, they said, a clear and bright day and there was no deformity in the road surface. They said the video footage showed Veitch Smyth \u201cslumped over the wheel\u201d of her car seconds before the crash. <\/p>\n

The Kia was taken for a technical examination by garda\u00ed, which did not uncover any defects in the car\u2019s braking or acceleration systems, the inquest heard. <\/p>\n

The coroner said a postmortem established that Veitch Smyth\u2019s died because of \u201chypovolemic shock due to significant blood loss from an extensive scalp injury, secondary to a road traffic collision\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, she said the postmortem showed no evidence of an acute incident which might have preceded the crash. Keane noted this did not mean there was not an acute incident, as some medical episodes may not show up in a postmortem. <\/p>\n

She also noted the video footage which showed Veitch Smyth slumped over the wheel of her car before the crash. <\/p>\n

She said it was \u201csimply not clear\u201d as to what happened, meaning an open verdict was appropriate. <\/p>\n

Expressing her sympathy to the deceased woman\u2019s family, she said they had suffered a \u201cshocking and very devastating loss\u201d. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An open verdict has been recorded at an inquest into the death of a Dublin woman whose car…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[615,30992,16844,61,60,43,39005],"class_list":["post-631663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-dublin","tag-dublin-14","tag-dundrum","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-rathfarnham"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}