Woman killed by protective wall in Cologne (D).

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In Germany, a driver on a motorway near Cologne was killed by a noise barrier. More than two years later, three suspects were charged. A spokesman for the Cologne court announced this on Friday.

At the time, an employee of the construction company was charged with manslaughter by omission and endangering construction. Two employees of the North Rhine-Westphalia road construction company are also charged with negligent homicide.

Irregular construction

In November 2020, a six-ton ​​concrete slab of the noise barrier on the A3 came loose, killing the 66-year-old driver in her car. The public prosecutor’s office initially investigated 17 suspects, but dropped the proceedings against 13 due to insufficient suspicion. Another suspect has since died.

The cause would have been a failed construction. The confirmation of the noise barrier would neither correspond to the originally planned construction nor to the approval of the building inspectorate. Detectives had searched a construction company in Ibbenbüren and the state road construction company in Gelsenkirchen.

The Landesbetrieb Strassen NRW announced shortly after the accident that the plate placement had been improvised in 2007 to compensate for a height difference. In the irregular construction, a welded screw could not withstand the tensile forces of the reinforced concrete part, which weighed several tons. In the months following the accident, the noise barriers on the highway were each fitted with two steel hooks and thus secured again. (SDA)

Source: Blick