It came to light when the chief engineer of the Norwegian Public Roads Administration, Tomasz Mleczko, presented his report in court on Wednesday. According to it, the accused woman must have hit the gas a few seconds before the accident happened.
Just before the accident, the car she was driving is said to have had a speed of 116 kilometers per hour. Then the gas was not pushed in and the car had started to skid.
Today, the trial against a woman in her 20s continued in Møre og Romsdal District Court. The woman is charged with negligent homicide and negligent homicide after the fatal accident in the Blindheim Tunnel on the E39 in Ålesund last summer. Three women died as a result of the accident.
Have examined the speed of the car lane
The Swedish Road Administration has looked at various data to arrive at the speed the two cars must have been traveling at the time of the accident.
Among other things, they have looked at the video recording from the tunnel and retrieved data from the airbag module, or the “black box”, in the white car that the defendant was driving. In addition, they have made their own calculations. Mleczko emphasized that data from the “black box” cannot be used alone, but must be seen in conjunction with other data.
According to Mleczko’s conclusion, the car, which the defendant was driving, had a speed of between 100 and 120 kilometers per hour in collision speed. The oncoming car, in which the three women who died were sitting, must have had a speed of between 55 and 75 kilometers per hour in collision speed.
– I am one hundred percent sure that the speed is somewhere between here, Mleczko said in court.
The chief engineer believes that it is more than 85% likely that the speed of the two vehicles is in the middle of the estimate, i.e. on 110 kilometers per hour for the white car and 65 kilometers per hour for the green car when the accident occurred.
Both cars are said to have been in good technical condition and the Swedish Road Administration has not found any fault with the cars that should have contributed to the accident. The white car must have been bigger than the green one. The defendant and the passengers in the white car received light to moderate injuries.
Senior engineer in the Norwegian Public Roads Administration, Tomasz Mleczko.
Photo: Øyvind Sandnes / NRK
“Black Box”
On Wednesday, a report from the so-called “black box” of the car was submitted during the trial.
A small, black box, which is installed at the front of the driver’s cabin, has come into place in more and more new cars in recent years. The box contains what is called an Event Data Recorder (EDR) and stores important information five seconds before the airbag deploys.
This has roughly the same function as the black box in airplanes.
The technology will be able to provide answers to questions such as:
- How fast was the car driving in the last seconds before the accident.
- Did the driver press the accelerator and/or brake pedal.
- Had the driver and passengers fastened their seat belts.
Thrown against the wall
Mleczko also went through what happened to the cars when they collided.
According to their analyses, the car belonging to the three deceased women must have been thrown 2.46 meters into the air during the collision. After the accident, it must have stopped almost instantly.
The white car that the accused woman was driving spun around and hit the tunnel wall.
Wet road surface
The defense attorney for the accused woman, Reidar Andresen, asked questions about the friction on the road on the day of the accident.
The road surface inside the tunnel was wet when the accident occurred. Chief engineer Mleczko explained in court that none of the investigations they did indicated that the road would be slippery as a result.
Acknowledged criminal liability
The woman in her 20s pleaded guilty to both charges when the trial started in Møre and Romsdal district court yesterday. She also accepts to pay any compensation claims in the case.
The police believe that the woman drove into the tunnel at a speed of over 90 kilometers per hour. According to the indictment, she must have stepped on the gas, which caused her to lose control of the car and cross into the oncoming lane.
