Truck driver acquitted of vehicular manslaughter - Munich

Last week, a Munich judge declared a truck driver "not guilty" after he had run over a 26-year-old cyclist at the corner of Arnulfstrasse and Sedlmayrstrasse last August. According to the evidence, he had been going at the speed of 12 kph when he overlooked the woman heading straight on the bicycle path while he was turning right. The truck driver can look back on 25 years of experience without any dangerous or harmful incident. The victim’s parents can look back on 26 years with their daughter and ahead to a bleak future, always with the underlying theme of the judge’s opinion that the defendant was free of guilt and that cyclists just have to be extremely cautious. She calls this case “a warning to all cyclists riding next to such a vehicular monster”.

Due to the height of the driver’s seat in the cab and in spite of the three mirrors on the right side of the truck there was no way that the driver could have prevented the collision, the court-appointed expert explained during the trial. The driver himself also denies any incorrect behavior – although one witness claims to have seen him handling a walkie-talkie at the time of the accident.

The victim’s father refuses to see force majeur in his daughter’s death and demands that trucks come to an absolute halt before turning a corner, or that traffic lights give cyclists a separate green cycle.

The victim’s family will most probably appeal the case.

It's tragic and I find it hard to even begin to understand the grief the family have gone through and are going through.
But there can be accidents without fault.

The whole area around the Donny Brucke is an accident blackspot and something needs to be done.
I don't know what though.

Changing the Order of the Cycle Traffic lights and Vehicle traffic lights would sop many of these accidents and allow better flow of traffic!

Allowing the Cyclists and pedestrians to cross for the last 20 second of the Green light rather than the First 20, will releive so much of the traffic problems in Munich, If not Germany!

Having cycled my way to work through downtown Hamburg/Toronto a couple of dozen times I am aware that drivers and cyclists alike should respect the other traffic participants more. Cyclists more often than not think they are above the law and cross red lights and J-cross intersections (usually endangering pedestrians in the process).

Personally I think anyone wanting to prove they have bigger balls than a 40T truck need to learn the hard way. You cant force your right of way and always expect to win.

Still sad cause of the death.

The key along that route is eperating right turning of trucks across the path of cyclists and pedestrians but that would slow traffic down considerably.

Very sad. I don't mean to sound like an insensitive ass, but the truck was moving at 12 kms an hour? Did she ride full-on into its side and knock herself out? If she was in front of the truck while it knocked her down he surely should have noticed, 25 years of great driving or not.

the truck did no have to be going fast. If it turned into her path and she was going full pelt into its side that would be enough to kill her (especially if she did not have a helmet). The once cycle accident I was ever in had a car turn right across my path as I came down a hill in Edinburgh. Since he was going from a standing stop in a queue waiting to turn right I guess he was at less than 10mph. But his move to turn into my path was too late for me to brake in time and I struck the side of his car and was catapulted up high over the car, against a bridge wall and then crashing down headfirst onto the road. The helmet I was wearing split in half with the force and almost certainly saved my life.

Cyclist speed is quite an issue in that area, there's some straight flat sections where you can build up quite a tempo.
If you are coming off the bridge then you can be going even faster and I witnessed the aftermath of a nasty accident of this type there about a year ago.
There were other people to call an ambulance and the police so I didn't stick around.

Maybe a STOP requirement for trucks turning right is one solution.
I#d also consider some kind of chicane or bump to slow cyclists down and perhaps have a STOP reuirement for them as well?

yes, both the motor vehicle and the cyclist have to be aware!
I saw a bad accident about 9 years ago, a cyclist came down the wrong side of a car (she came on the left out of the parking lot) and turned right infront of a moving truck pulling out into traffic. The motorist was looking front and to the left to see if cars were coming, but not left behind, as it was a single lane exit from a parking lot, and the women came the wrong way.
It was raining and she had her head down, neither was going fast, but the collision sent her flying a few meters landing on her (unprotected) head. She died a few hours later.

I think both need to be more appreciative of the other. I often see cyclists (not all, but enough) that are going high speed through high pedestrian traffic areas or near busstops, where the bikepath and the sidewalk often are overcrowded as people get on/off the bus.

The way I see this they were going down Arnulfstrasse parallel to each other, the truck on the street, the cyclist on the bike path. You would think that a guy who has been driving a truck for 25 years knows enough to glance at the bike path well before he hits the intersection where he's planning to turn right and has enough experience and common sense to stop to let any cyclists he might have seen [s]and taken seriously[/s] pass.

Of course, if there is a huge truck next to you you'll be more wary than of a Smart, merely out of self-preservation. On the other hand, this could be a precedence for a blanket acquittal for all truck drivers, meaning they will lose whatever remnants of courtesy they may still have and just barrel on through.

Depending on the speed and position SaraB he could have lookd in advance and not seen her and when he did turn she was in a mirror blind spot.

I cycle that route a fair bit and MT is right (he knows that area well too). The bike path is narrow, visibility isn't great even in a car especially due to the building work there (for the last few years). At low sun times, the visibility is even worse. We don't know if the truck driver had driven there before, if he had he'd have known that you get a few cyclists building up speed in that section. I get cut up there regularly despite keeping as far right as possible on the bike path and maintaining a regular speed.
I can certainly believe that a blind spot led to this tragedy.

Perhaps more signage or delayed signals would have helped (although many on that bike route ignore that light to be honest), but sometimes an accident is just that.

And cyclists, it is better to be alive than right. Ride defensively - you don't have airbags and the truck will win.

The first is correct, the latter is almost offensive. Cyclists here rarely look at anything while thinking they automatically have the right of way. This tragic incident shows that they need to think twice about what that actually might mean in the end. I all too often see cyclists oblivious to the world around them just ride in front of cars as if they had some kind of force field around them. 10 to 1 says the cyclist failed to use due care and caution thinking the law was on her side and the poor truck driver now has to deal with a tragic incident because the laws of physics says the cyclist over estimated the wrong set of laws.

Sorry, but this sounds like a Darwin Award to me.

This is devoid of reality & is unenforceable. Enough people jump dark yellow/red[sup]*[/sup] lights without being caught

*Sometimes known as Kirschgrün.

what a nasty little anticyclist tirade. Although there are occasional miscreants most of the other cyclists on my route into work (which crosses that intersection) take a lot of care. But eurovol you seem to have a critical misunderstanding of the rights of cyclists in Munich. At junctions cyclists have right of way over motorvehicles just as righthand car lanes have right of way over a car in the left lane wanting to turn right.