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Land’s End to John O’Groats record holder Christina Mackenzie says she is “disgusted” by the driver who “left her for dead” in a hit-and-run in Stirlingshire last month.
The collision left Mackenzie with “excruciating pain” from a fractured pelvis which required 10 days of hospital treatment, and she now faces up to a year to recover fully from her injuries.
Speaking to STV News, Mackenzie said she cannot accept the driver’s decision to flee the scene after hitting her with both their vehicle [below] and the trailer it was towing.
“The decision that they made to just leave me, I’m disgusted by it,” she said.
“[I’m] thinking: ‘How you could do that to someone else?’ I’m not just a cyclist, I’m someone’s sister, I’m someone’s daughter, I’m someone’s niece, I’m someone’s auntie. These people in the cars, they’ve got the same relatives as well, so what would they think if something happened to them?
“The force of it just completely wiped me out. I skidded around, I hit my head a couple of times off the ground and then ended up back facing the way that I was coming, so I did a 180.”
The driver of the vehicle behind the one that hit Ms Mackenzie stopped to help before she was taken to Forth Valley Royal Hospital.
Unfortunately, the 45-year-old says her time at hospital was an “awful experience” as she was forced to “justify” why — as a person who lives alone — she needed to stay for fear of being unable to look after herself.
“I didn’t want to be there, I wanted to be home, but I didn’t feel safe to be and it was just that awful, awful experience of having to justify why you need to be there,” she said.
On leaving hospital after 10 days she had to climb steps to her flat without help.
“I was just in tears with the pain just trying to get up there,” Ms Mackenzie recalled. “I literally had to basically just suffer the pain to get every single step – the further the steps were going up, the pain just became more and more excruciating.”
A failure to deliver the strong painkillers Ms Mackenzie wanted left her taking paracetamol for 11 hours before they were eventually delivered.
Forth Valley NHS said it was “sorry to hear” its patient “was unhappy with aspects of her care” and said a member of the patient relations team would “contact her directly so that we can look into the issues she has raised.”
The driver of the vehicle — believed to be a black Ford Ranger with tinted windows — towing a silver trailer, has still not been found.
Road policing sergeant Jack Swindells made a statement suggesting “the driver may not be aware that they are involved in the incident”.
“We must stress that the driver may not be aware that they are involved in the incident. [Due to] the type of road that this incident occurred on and the type of vehicle involved, towing a trailer, it may be the case that they had not been aware they had this collision. They may have continued their journey and be none the wiser.
“What I would say is if you do recognise this vehicle or you potentially have any information, I’d ask you to contact on 101 quoting incident 2444 for September 27.”
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