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A3 near Cologne: The scene of the accident on November 13, 2020
Photo: Daniel Evers / dpa
Three and a half years ago, a driver died when a concrete part of a noise barrier fell on the A3 near Cologne. Now a trial is within reach. The Cologne regional court has fully approved the charges against the three accused and opened the main proceedings, said a spokesman for the dpa news agency. The trial is likely to begin in the summer, but the exact date has not yet been set.
In November 2020, a six-ton concrete slab from the noise barrier came loose and killed a 66-year-old woman from Cologne in her car. The public prosecutor's office has charged an employee of the construction company at the time with manslaughter by omission and endangering construction. Two employees of the NRW state road construction company are accused of negligent homicide.
The public prosecutor's office initially investigated 17 suspects, but discontinued proceedings against 13 due to insufficient suspicion. Another suspect has since died.
Improvised construction
According to the prosecution, botched construction work led to the accident. The fastening of the noise barrier is said to have neither corresponded to the originally planned construction nor to the building regulations approval. Shortly after the accident, the North Rhine-Westphalia Roads Authority announced that an improvisation had been carried out when installing the slab in 2007 in order to compensate for a difference in height. In the irregular construction, a welded screw did not support the tensile forces of the multi-ton reinforced concrete part in the long term.
According to the prosecution, the cause of the crash was ultimately rust. Due to a lack of corrosion protection, an already unacceptable bracket had rusted until it gave way. In the months after the accident, the sound barriers on the motorway were each fitted with two steel hooks and thus re-secured.
The defendants are said to have known about the construction defects and done nothing. The construction company's division manager faces up to 15 years in prison. He is said to have known about the defects and the danger since September 2008 at the latest - based on a static report. Because he still didn't do anything to eliminate the defects, the concrete slabs fell down. In doing so, he accepted the death of the driver.
The two project managers at Strassenbau NRW face fines or prison sentences of up to five years. You are accused of knowing about the deviation from the plan for the bracket. Nevertheless, in the following years they neither checked their safety nor requested a static assessment.
wit/dpa