Shortly before 7pm on Monday, August 8, Doctor Ciara Curran tweeted: “I was knocked off my bike into oncoming traffic by someone opening the door of a parked car.”

An experienced cyclist, she suffered non-life-changing injuries in the collision along the Promenade in Salthill.

“The next person may not be so lucky!” she said.

It was a close shave that stirred a latent safety movement into action, organically.

“I just had a very visceral reaction to her story. I got a bit hot-headed about it,” recalled Gráinne Faller, organiser of the new Sundays4Safety group that’s lobbying for safer streets and roads for all users.

“It felt like an incident like that, where someone really could have been seriously injured or killed, if that didn’t elicit a reaction and some sort of call for change, I was wondering ‘what will?’ Is it actually going to take someone dying?”

Rather than vent on Twitter – although she did that too! – Gráinne channelled her anger into positive action.

The mother-of-two, businesswoman, activist, and Salthill resident type out homemade leaflets, which included a safety message: “Look before you open your car door.” Then, she handed them out on the Prom.

Get the full story in this week’s Galway City Tribune, on sale in shops now, or you can download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie. You can also download our Tribune App from Apple’s App Store or get the Android Version from Google Play.