Joanna: I was throttled and scratched by a road-rage driver
RTÉ weather forecaster Joanna Donnelly has told how she was attacked by a motorist who tried to throttle her during a shocking road-rage incident.
The presenter revealed on Twitter that she had been cycling when a motorist beeped at a child who was cycling with her.
Ms Donnelly, whose sunny disposition on RTÉ’s Weather reports has won her thousands of social media followers, revealed how things turned violent when she remonstrated with the driver.
‘This summer a woman beeped at a child I was cycling with,’ she said. ‘When I stopped and suggested this was unacceptable, she put her hand around my throat,
‘Not appropriate behaviour’
throttled me, then pulled her nails across my neck drawing blood.
‘This is not appropriate behaviour on our roads.’
Along with the post, the meteorologist shared a picture of her neck and shoulders covered in red scrape marks.
She also revealed she had reported the i ncident to the gardaí, who she said ‘were very helpful and kind. Thankfully’.
There was an outpouring of support f r om her f oll owers including the cycling lobby group,
Dublin Cycling Campaign. They wrote: ‘Eight-year-olds shouldn’t have to worry about motor traffic on their cycles to and from school. The solution is straightforward: Create networks of safe, segregated cycle routes across our urban areas which enable people of all ages & abilities to cycle. That’s it.’
Previously, the mother-of-three has opened up about a fear that her husband would be killed while cycling to work.
‘When I was pregnant for the first time, and Harm [her husband] went off to work on his bike, I sat there and thought he would die and I would be left by myself the child,’ she admitted.
‘I sat there crying, wondering how I would go on. But of course, Harm c a me h o me again,’ she said.
Ms Donnelly’s own father died when she was just three years old when her mother was pregnant with her youngest sibling.