Traffic accidents The TSJA orders that the insurance also cover a reckless accident

The Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia (TSJA) has ruled that a death insurance must cover the death of a young person who suffered a traffic accident when driving at excessive speed with a motorcycle with a large displacement and without having the required license for this type of vehicle.

It was about a “Improvement insurance” hired by the young man’s company and included in its Collective Agreement, which provided for a additional compensation of 26,338 euros in case of death. The insurance company refused to pay, arguing that the accident occurred due to negligence of the deceased since, according to the Civil Guard report, he was driving at excessive speed on a road limited to 40 km / hour and without having a license to drive motorcycles.

It happened on August 15, 2015 on a road between Algeciras and Ronda, when the young man lost control of his motorcycle, collided with a car, went off the road and fell down a slope.

The TSJA Social Room, in a sentence to which this newspaper had access, decrees that the motorist could act without “due diligence and foresight” but not with “reckless recklessness or gross negligence”, which require doing so with “a clear disregard for risk and the most elemental prudence required” and in a manner “Notoriously dangerous”, which “not at all” occurred in this case.

Thus, the young man did not have a motorcycle license but was studying at a driving school to get it and had the B, C1, C, BE, C1E, CE and BTP permits, which shows that “he was an expert driver”, says the sentence. Furthermore, “he was not an abandoned driver” because at the time of the accident He wore a protective helmet, was the owner of the damaged motorcycle, which had passed the ITV and had the insurance in order.

Added to this are road deficiencies, which “lacked separation marks in both directions and had impractical shoulders, circumstances beyond the control of the driver that could have contributed to the fatal consequences.”

In this regard, the TSJA cites a 2008 Supreme Court ruling according to which “the concept of Reckless recklessness does not have the same significance in this area of ​​law as in the criminal field, from the moment in which the legal interests protected in both cases are different ”and“ a greater intensity when it comes to criminally reproaching certain actions or omissions ”.

In the case of the insurance contracted by the company, the TSJA recalls that it covered the death in a traffic accident of any of its workers, but without specifying whether it should be in an accident at work and without “expressly excluding” the difference between pedestrian and driver, as well as “recklessness or negligence of the deceased”.

Then the TSJA understands that it is necessary to resort to an interpretation of the agreements and in this case it believes that the will of the negotiators was to cover harmful events whose occurrence was beyond the will of the insured and without including those who acted with “deliberate will to assume illicit conduct and with a clear disregard for risk ”, which would mean protecting“ criminal conduct ”.

Such an interpretation of negligence “Cannot be extracted at all” from the worker’s behavior deceased, says the TSJA, that for this reason it has to compensate the parents of the deceased in 26,338 euros, increased in the legal interests.

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