Just weeks before the accident, singer-songwriter Morgan Joanel felt like she was finally building momentum.
After years of working as an independent artist and supporting acts including Anne-Marie, Adam Lambert and Jason Derulo, she had organised a tour of Western Australia and was looking forward to getting back on the road.
‘I felt like I had a new horizon,’ Morgan tells the Daily Mail. ‘I’d spent years recording and saving money. I was getting ready to release more music and travel again.’
Then, on an ordinary Friday night in 2021, everything changed in an instant.
Morgan was getting ready to meet friends for drinks in Scarborough when she booked an Uber to take her across Perth.
Because Covid restrictions were still in place, Uber instructed passengers to sit in the back seat rather than beside the driver. Morgan usually sat in the front, but that night she followed the advice and climbed into the back.
‘The last thing I remember is closing the front door and saying goodbye to my partner,’ she says. ‘I don’t remember getting into the Uber. I don’t remember the drive. I don’t remember the accident.’
Those memories never came back.
Singer-songwriter Morgan Joanel (pictured) got in an Uber to meet friends for drinks on an ordinary Friday night in 2021. Within minutes, her life would change forever
Morgan’s musical career was on the rise when she suffered a devastating accident that left her with life-changing injuries
What Morgan later learned was that as she approached her destination on Scarborough Beach Road, another vehicle collided with the Uber.
Police soon determined the other driver had been travelling at 144km/h in a 60km/h zone when he struck the Uber.
Morgan had been sitting on the side that absorbed the impact.
The collision left her with a fractured pelvis in two places, 11 broken ribs, a brain bleed, spinal injuries and damage to her heart. The driver responsible fled the scene. Morgan remembers none of it.
Instead, she had to piece together what happened through doctors, police and friends, including one friend who had been waiting for her to arrive.
About an hour after Morgan texted to say she was on her way, she still hadn’t shown up. Calls and messages went unanswered. Worried, her friend stepped outside and saw emergency vehicles surrounding a badly damaged car nearby.
By then, Morgan had already been taken to hospital.
When Morgan eventually woke up, nothing made sense.
The collision left Morgan with a fractured pelvis in two places, 11 broken ribs, a brain bleed, spinal injuries and damage to her heart. The driver responsible fled the scene
Morgan remembers nothing about the accident
For nearly two weeks, she had remained in bed, unable to walk and heavily reliant on pain medication as doctors monitored her recovery
A brain bleed had caused retrograde amnesia, leaving her unable to remember the crash or the days immediately afterwards. Although doctors and police repeatedly explained what had happened, she struggled to connect with the reality of it.
‘It felt like people were telling me a very serious story about something I couldn’t relate to,’ she says. ‘I knew they were being serious. I knew something major had happened. But I couldn’t connect to it because I couldn’t remember any of it.’
What Morgan couldn’t fully grasp at the time was just how badly she had been injured.
The crash had left her with a fractured pelvis in two places, 11 broken ribs, spinal injuries, damage to her heart and a brain bleed that required close monitoring in hospital.
For almost two weeks, she remained confined to bed, unable to walk, while doctors carried out scans, tests and neurological assessments.
Everyone around her understood the seriousness of the situation. Morgan didn’t.
Looking back, she remembers doctors, police officers and specialists visiting her bedside and asking questions about her memory, while she tried to make sense of a reality that felt completely disconnected from her own.
As the days passed, the extent of her injuries became clear. Morgan had spent almost two weeks confined to bed and had yet to take a single step on her own.
Eventually, doctors helped her out of bed for the first time.
‘I remember it feeling like lightning bolts through my body,’ she says.
For nearly two weeks, she had remained in bed, unable to walk and heavily reliant on painkillers as doctors monitored her recovery. Once she was able to move around using a frame and a wheelchair, she was discharged to continue recovering at home.
‘As is often the case in trauma wards, they needed the bed,’ she says.
Eventually, the reality of what recovery would involve began to sink in.
Morgan spent weeks in a wheelchair before progressing to crutches. She moved in with her mother, who took time off work to care for her and filled the house with mobility aids, shower chairs and equipment Morgan never imagined she would need in her 30s.
‘She basically took over everything,’ Morgan says. ‘I wasn’t driving. I wasn’t cleaning. I wasn’t cooking. Mum was bringing me food, helping me get around and taking me to appointments.’
At first, she approached recovery the same way she approached most challenges in life: with determination. What she wasn’t prepared for was how long it would take.
Months after the accident, she was still struggling with pain, unable to move properly and increasingly frustrated by a body that no longer behaved the way she expected.
‘It was probably around six months later that everything started to hit me,’ she says.
‘I kept thinking, “I should be doing more by now. I should be back performing. I should be planning tours.” But every time I tried to push myself, my body would shut down.’
Looking back, Morgan believes that was the hardest part of the entire experience.
‘It wasn’t really the accident itself,’ she says. ‘It was everything that came afterwards.’
As the months passed, Morgan became increasingly determined not to let the accident define the rest of her life.
Nearly two years later, feeling stuck and unsure what came next, she bought a one-way ticket to London.
‘I just thought, “I don’t know what I’m going to do anymore, but I need something different,”‘ she says.
The trip became a turning point. Morgan spent four months travelling, reconnecting with friends, attending music festivals and immersing herself in creative projects. Away from the routines and reminders of recovery, she began to feel hopeful again.
‘I found a new lease on everything,’ she says. ‘Being around creative people again and being around music reminded me who I was.’
When she returned home, opportunities slowly started appearing again. There were performances, festival bookings and new projects and, perhaps most importantly, growing proof that the future she imagined for herself hadn’t disappeared altogether.
Getting back on stage, however, proved far more difficult than she had expected.
Before the accident, Morgan could perform multiple shows across a weekend without thinking twice. Afterwards, a single gig could leave her exhausted for days.
‘I’d play one show and then need two days in bed just to recover,’ she says. ‘It felt unbelievable. I couldn’t understand why my body was reacting that way.’
Instead of giving up, she learned how to work with her body’s limitations rather than constantly fighting against them. She paid closer attention to the warning signs, prioritised rest where she could and slowly rebuilt her endurance.
Still, opportunities slowly started appearing again. In a full-circle moment, she was a support act for Australian rock icons The Superjesus, a band she had met while still recovering on crutches after the crash.
Today, chronic pain from her fractured pelvis remains a daily reality.
‘I never wake up fully unaware of that injury,’ she says. ‘It is always present.’
Touring, performing and travelling all require careful planning, and pain flare-ups can still leave her exhausted. Yet despite the challenges, Morgan has continued building the career she was told might no longer be possible.
Earlier this year, she completed a national tour supporting British singer-songwriter Newton Faulkner. For audiences, it may have looked like another tour; for Morgan, it represented the culmination of years of recovery, setbacks and determination.
‘It was a really big moment for me,’ she says. ‘It made me feel like these things are still possible.’
Three years after the crash, another chapter of the story finally came to an end when the driver responsible was sentenced to prison.
Morgan attended the hearing and found herself face-to-face with the man whose actions had changed the course of her life.
She remembers locking eyes with him before leaving the courtroom, but it was a conversation with a police officer afterwards that stayed with her.
‘He said, “I’m really glad to see you here,”‘ she recalls. ‘At first I thought he was just being polite, but then he said, “No, I’m serious. Usually, in a case like this, I’m talking to the next of kin.”‘
The comment forced Morgan to confront something she had spent years trying not to dwell on: just how close she had come to a completely different outcome.
Today, she is focused firmly on the future.
Alongside new music and more touring plans, she is developing a one-woman show called Impact, inspired by the experience that reshaped her life. Through music and storytelling, the production explores the ripple effects a single moment can have and the unexpected ways people rebuild after trauma.
Looking back, Morgan doesn’t see herself as a victim of what happened that night. Instead, she sees someone who was forced to adapt.
The accident changed her body, her career, her relationships and her understanding of herself. It also gave her a new perspective on time and the importance of backing herself.
‘When something like this happens, you realise nothing is guaranteed,’ she says.
‘If there’s something I want to create or somewhere I want to go, I don’t spend as much time overthinking it anymore.
‘I just think, “Why not?”‘
