The court – which found that at the time of the tragedy the defendant had a significantly limited sanity – in a non-final judgment prohibited the woman from driving motor vehicles for 10 years, and imposed financial penalties on her.
The accident occurred on June 24, 2019 at the examination site of the Provincial Road Traffic Center at Ekonomiczna Street in Rybnik. A 68-year-old woman who was taking her driving test ran into a 35-year-old examiner. The man died as a result of his injuries.
During the investigation and after the accusation of causing a fatal accident in land traffic, the woman refused to explain. She didn’t even want to say if she pleaded guilty. The wording of the accusation against the woman was preceded by an analysis of the monitoring recordings that recorded the course of the accident, witness testimonies and the opinion of an expert who indicated that the car in which the woman was driving during the exam was operational.
The investigators stated that in the opinion drawn up during the proceedings, the investigators found that the woman had limited sanity. The court took it into account – according to the operative part of the judgment, the woman acted in a situation of a significant limitation of the ability to recognize the meaning of her act or to manage the proceedings; in such a situation, the court may apply extraordinary leniency.
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The sentence of imprisonment is the mildest possible for such an offense – it can be punishable by six months to 8 years in prison. The court also conditionally suspended the sentence for a two-year probationary period. He also targeted the woman 4,000. PLN fine and a penalty in the form of a driving ban for 10 years. He also ordered her to pay the costs incurred by the auxiliary prosecutors in connection with the appointment of their attorney and the court costs.
As the description of the accusation shows, the tragedy occurred when the examined person was asked to drive a car along the curve marked on the examination site. It did not stop in the designated place and accelerated rapidly after knocking off the bollard with the pole. She hit a man coming out of another test vehicle who, seeing what was happening, wanted to react. He died on the spot as a result of his injuries.
An expert on road accident reconstruction confirmed that the 68-year-old was constantly pressing the gas pedal instead of stopping in front of the cone while driving forward in the arc. The woman drove the car for only 11 seconds, the examiner who stood on the track had only 1.5 seconds to react.
After the accident, the blood of the 68-year-old was also examined. There was no alcohol or psychotropic substances in it, but there was a drug in it, which the experts initially had doubts as to whether it might affect psychomotor performance. After obtaining additional materials, the specialists issued a second opinion, in which they concluded that the concentration of the drug in the woman’s body was below the therapeutic levels and therefore it did not affect the driver’s performance.
In the investigation, the prosecutor’s office also examined the circumstances of the 68-year-old’s training. The documentation shows that the woman started driving lessons in April 2018, she finished in June, but the instructor stated that she needed additional drives. She passed it and passed the internal exam – practical and theoretical – at the beginning of August 2018. Later she took the theory exam. She passed in the fifth time, in January. She took the practical exam in June.
Prosecutors at the beginning of the investigation emphasized that the investigation did not concern a typical road accident – the tragedy occurred on the maneuvering yard, and the perpetrator was a person who had not yet obtained a driving license. Despite such circumstances – they added – the applicable regulations and jurisprudence allow for the accusation of such a person of causing an accident in land traffic, understood more broadly than just public roads.
(kp)
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