The driver who hit her drove across the filter at full speed, and Mrs Stirton said that she believed that people new to island life should be given a driving test.
The motorist was given a suspended prison sentence and banned from driving for three years.
Mrs Stirton was riding home after visiting a friend at about 1.30 on a Sunday afternoon in May when she was hit by a van as she crossed the filter at the Halfway.
‘I was approaching the cycle path,’ she said.
‘I think I was four inches away from my front wheel touching the cycle path before I got hit.’
She said she was later told that she had hit the windscreen on the passenger side and was dragged along after the impact.
‘I think it was about 22 feet in the end,’ she said.
‘I remember just being in excruciating pain and not being able to get my words out of my mouth and being surrounded by people, and there was a paramedic there.'
She spent five nights in the intensive care unit at the PEH.
‘I was on breathing apparatus, I was eating smoothie food. It was horrendous. I was scared to go to sleep because I thought I was going to die. It was horrible.’
Mrs Stirton said she was wearing a cycle helmet and was told that it had saved her life.
Even so, she suffered seven broken ribs, one displaced rib, and a dislocated jaw.
Deep tissue damage to her left leg means that it is still numb, but she expects this to fade with time.
She is also now suffering from post-concussion syndrome which means her short-term memory is affected, and she experiences severe dizziness and fatigue.
This is a condition that can last years, she was told, and it and her other injuries have affected her life. She has still not returned to work full-time.
Mrs Stirton was using a bike owned by her employer, the Youth Commission, which was damaged beyond repair.
‘It ended up looking like a Pringle,’ she said.
She said that there was perhaps one good thing to come out of her experience, in that as a youth worker she is able to talk to young people about the importance of wearing a cycle helmet.
Her colleagues have also used it, asking for opinions on how many points of impact there were on it.
‘A lot of them will say three, but actually there’s 15. It’s cracked all the way through, and it’s a mess.’
That paves the way for a conversation about the safety and importance of bike helmets.
Mrs Stirton said that in the weeks and months following her accident, she has learned of several other incidents involving bikes at the same place.
She did not think the driver in this case was aware of how filters work.
‘I think that these people who come to the islands should do a driving test before they come on to our roads on things like how to use filters,’ she said. ‘This guy just did not slow down at all for a filter, and just hit me at nearly 35-40 miles an hour.
‘You see so many posts on social media about cyclists and how they’re ignorant and they’re doing this and they’re doing that. But I did nothing wrong that day.’
Since the crash as well as still experiencing pain and the effects of her physical injuries, she has suffered flashbacks and did not expect to get back on a bike again.
She said that had also led to her worrying about her daughter, and how she might react if she ever asked for a bike of her own.