What is the truth of the incident that occurred in Gamman-dong, Busan in 2016?
SBS 'I want to know', which was broadcast on the 5th, under the subtitle 'Signal of a question in the run', highlighted the incident of sudden acceleration in Gamman-dong, Busan in 2016.
On August 2, 2016, the incident of sudden acceleration occurred in Gamman-dong, Busan.
On this day, Mu-sang Han headed to Dadaepo Beach with his wife, daughter, and two grandchildren.
However, as he was passing near the kite bridge, he sensed something strange about the vehicle he was riding in.
The out-of-control vehicle ran at an increasingly frightening speed, and after a 14-second run, it crashed into a trailer parked on the shoulder.
In the accident, Mu-sang Han suffered serious head injuries, and all four members of his family in the vehicle died except for him.
Mu-sang Han, who obtained a driver's license in 1989 and has been driving for 27 years, has driven a commercial truck for over 10 years and was also driving a taxi at the time of the accident, so his family and his family thought the cause of the accident was a problem with the vehicle.
However, the police confirmed the statement that the drivers of the surrounding vehicles who witnessed the accident did not see the brake lights of the accident vehicle turn on until just before the crash, and checked the brake lights of the accident vehicle that worked normally after the accident. He was deemed dead and forwarded to the prosecution with an opinion of indictment.
The police determined that it was the driver's negligence, who mistook the accelerator pedal for the brake.
The prosecution's decision was different.
Prosecutors dismissed the charges against driver Han Moo-sang.
As a result of the prosecution's test, if the accelerator pedal was continuously pressed instead of the brake, the speed in a collision must be over 100 km/h, and it is impossible for the driver to keep pressing the accelerator pedal in such a situation as a rule of thumb.
In addition, the National Forensic Service judged that the result of the inspection of the vehicle damaged after the accident may be different from the condition at the time of the accident.
After the prosecution decided not to prosecute, the bereaved family wanted to know the truth about the cause of the accident.
Accordingly, the family of the bereaved started a lawsuit for damages of 10 billion won against the manufacturer of the accident vehicle.
A few months after the accident, the National Assembly argued that the accident was not attributable to the driver's fault.
Rep. Park Yong-jin believed that the accident could have occurred due to defective parts in the accident vehicle due to public interest reports.
What he obtained through the informant was the internal documents of the manufacturer of the accident vehicle.
According to internal documents, in the case of this model vehicle, diesel oil is mixed with engine oil due to leakage of the high-pressure fuel pump, and this can cause a so-called 'overrun' symptom as it burns again. It was confirmed that there was, and he was already aware of it.
Therefore, the bereaved family decided that the accident occurred due to the sudden acceleration phenomenon due to this overrun problem.
However, after four and a half years of legal battle, in January, the court ruled against the bereaved family, saying that they did not sufficiently prove the accident caused by the defect in the vehicle.
However, the bereaved family could not give up and appealed again.
Because I needed to know what had caused me to lose my entire family that day.
Therefore, the production team analyzed the black box video of the accident vehicle together with experts to find out the cause of the accident that day.
In response, Park Seong-ji, former head of the traffic accident analysis division at the National Forensic Service, said, "If a pedal error occurs, the only way is to shift to the brake pedal and step on it."
In addition, lawyer Ha Jong-sun emphasized that the driver sounded the horn as an evasive action to sound the horn as one of the important factors to distinguish the sudden acceleration was whether the driver took an evasive action when the driver was in a sudden acceleration situation.
The court also looked at whether the driver had an evasive reaction.
However, the court ruled that he did not steer the steering wheel when he saw a passerby on the road just before the accident.
An eyewitness who avoided the accident vehicle that day recalled, "I think he was trying to avoid me. Immediately after the crash, the driver seemed unconscious. Then he came to his senses and unconsciously continued to sound the horn."
However, the problem was that it was not confirmed whether the brake, the most obvious avoidance reaction, was applied.
Contrary to the driver's claim that the brake was applied, the National Forensic Service analyzed that the vehicle's brake light was off.
At that time, the National Forensic Service analyzed whether the brake light was on based on the black box image of the vehicle that witnessed the accident, but decided that it was difficult to see that the brake light was on.
The National Forensic Service said that it was recorded with a black box under the same conditions with the same model as the accident vehicle.
However, as a result of data analysis, it was revealed that the video was recorded with a black box with a different resolution in an environment different from that at the time of the accident.
The informant, who worked at a store near the intersection at the time of the accident, said that he saw the accident at the time and felt it was an accident.
In response, the informant said, "It was not in a state of not holding the brake. I saw the brake light. The brake light was on even at the moment of the collision."
The informant left the scene at the time of the accident, thinking that some of the witnesses saw the brake lights like him.
However, he said after the results of a recent civil lawsuit became known, he made the tip to the fact that he might be the only witness he had.
In particular, he revealed that he was willing to attend as a witness whenever the court called him.
During the interview, the production crew revealed that the statements made by the police on the basis of the driver's negligence were not true.
At the time of the accident, drivers of nearby vehicles explained that they could not see whether the brakes were on or not because there were no circumstances, but the police left an investigation report that the brake lights did not turn on until the moment of collision with the trailer.
After the incident, an article was posted on an Internet community that said that they had experienced a similar incident while driving the same vehicle.
And the author claimed that this was due to the high-pressure fuel pump.
However, the vehicle manufacturer said that this claim was a misunderstanding from an engineering point of view.
He also said that the engine overrun phenomenon and the brake system are not related at all.
The opinions of experts were divided on this.
Some agreed with the manufacturer's assertion, and some opposed it.
The informant who experienced an overrun with the same car model as the car accident in 2015 said, "There was a harbinger before the symptoms occurred."
However, the vibration of the vehicle was also present in the Busan accident vehicle.
About 10 minutes before the accident, he said, "Why is the car shaking so suddenly?"
And the manufacturer claimed that white smoke, one of the typical symptoms of overrun, did not occur, and that in the case of the accident vehicle, it was not an accident due to overrun.
In the course of the interview, an expert expressed it as a sloped playground for the product liability law lawsuit.
It is very difficult for consumers to prove a product's defects to the manufacturer, and especially in the case of a car made of more than 30,000 parts, it is bound to become a more inclined playground.
In Korea, only the National Forensic Service and the Automobile Safety Research Institute are the only institutions that can check automobile defects, but individuals are not permitted to request an evaluation.
As for the broadcast, it was regrettable what would have happened if the national investigative agency was in charge of only automobile-related crimes, and the government-accredited automobile agency was in charge of the analysis of traffic accidents and vehicles.
He also said, “What if the discovery system, a system in which the parties to a lawsuit request and collect each other’s evidence or information, before the trial begins, was also applied to domestic courts? and system are desperately needed in our society,” he emphasized.
(SBS Entertainment News Editor Kim Hyo-jung)