The serious accident in which four people were killed early Sunday morning on Autobahn 5 near the Friedberg junction was caused by a wrong-way driver.

The police and the public prosecutor's office confirmed this on Monday.

In the collision, in which four cars were involved, the alleged cause of the accident, a 33-year-old man from the Gießen district, was so seriously injured that he died shortly afterwards in a hospital.

The authorities initially did not provide any information about why he had hit the wrong lane.

Wolfram Ahlers

Correspondent for the Rhein-Main-Zeitung for Central Hesse and the Wetterau.

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Katharina Iskandar

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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According to previous investigations, the wrong-way driver drove his Opel Astra on the section between the junction of Ober-Mörlen and Friedberg on the road towards Kassel in the opposite direction to the south at around 4.40 a.m. Between the Wetterau service station and the Friedberg driveway, the man collided with his car head-on against a Renault occupied by four young people. Two of the inmates, a nineteen-year-old and a man of the same age from the Gießen district, died at the scene of the accident. Two other nineteen-year-olds in the back of the car were seriously injured. An Opel following the Renault and an Aston Martin could no longer evade and crashed into the car involved in the accident. The 68-year-old driver of the Opel from Frankfurt was injured so badly by the force of the collision,that he also died at the scene of the accident. The 52-year-old driver of the Aston Martin from the Rheingau-Taunus district suffered minor injuries.

Debris at several hundred meters

The rescue workers were presented with a picture of the destruction at the scene of the accident.

The engine block of one of the cars had been torn out by the force of the collision, another car was wedged in the guardrail, another had overturned and was lying on the roof.

Debris spread over several hundred meters.

The motorway section was closed until midday on Sunday for rescue and clean-up work and for reconstruction of the accident.

A crisis intervention team looked after first aiders and witnesses at the Wetterau service area.

The police are looking for more witnesses to investigate the course of the accident.

Rüdiger Wollgramm, a traffic expert at the police union, knows how difficult it can be to investigate such complex accidents.

"No matter how big or small the accident is - the most important rule of thumb in the investigation is: Nothing is what it seems." Accident happened.

Often it is very different. "

Meticulous search for clues

In an accident of this size, the scene of the crime plays a central role, "which in the end is not so different from that of a homicide". At the beginning there is the meticulous recording of all tracks. How are the braking distances? Where can I find paint adherence? Which vehicles were in contact? Then, as a rule, a drone is used to document the scene of the accident from the air. And finally, what, according to Wollgramm, has been preoccupying the police more and more for several years now begins: digital investigations, namely reading out the on-board computers of the vehicles involved.

“Ten years ago,” says the expert, “a vehicle was a purely passive object when the accident happened. In the meantime, that no longer applies. ”Safety systems are built into many cars, which ensure that a vehicle“ reacts ”in the event of an accident without the driver's influence, actively participating in what is happening. "We always have to take this into account in the investigation." It is no longer possible to draw conclusions about the course of the accident based on the final position of the vehicle.

The many automatic safety systems such as multi-collision brakes, which are designed to avert further dangers to the vehicle, changed the location of the lanes at the scene of the accident. It is therefore essential to include this data in the investigation and to compare it with the traces that were found at the scene of the crime, as well as the meticulous documentation of the scene of the accident and the vehicles themselves. “We always have to ask ourselves: Are the facts that are presented to us plausible? Does everything fit together? Who gave the decisive impetus? Man or machine? This is the only way to obtain a reliable picture in the end, which will also endure in court. "

In the case of the devastating accident on Sunday, the cause seems clear: According to current investigations, the wrong-way driver caused the accident, for whatever reason. The investigations are now all the more focused on his motive. Data can still be read from heavily destroyed vehicles. “This sometimes requires a little more effort, but it is possible,” as Wollgramm says. It is not uncommon for the police to contact the automobile manufacturers or suppliers in order to involve them in the investigation. “We have to interpret the data,” says Wollgramm. This is also important in order to later provide the reviewer with valid material: "If we work sloppily, then even the best experts can no longer save anything."