BA test vehicle with modern assistance systems was involved in a serious accident with one dead and nine seriously injured on the B28. Whether the vehicle was driven by the 43-year-old driver or not is the subject of the investigation and is currently unknown, a police spokesman said on Tuesday. According to the information, the cause of the accident is unclear.
According to the police, the 43-year-old was driving an autonomous e-test vehicle near Römerstein (Baden-Württemberg) on Monday afternoon. In a curve, the car came into the oncoming lane for reasons that are still unclear and grazed an oncoming car there. The 70-year-old driver then crashed his car head-on into another car. The car left the roadway and immediately caught fire. The test car also crashed head-on into another car. The 33-year-old passenger in the car suffered fatal injuries from the violent impact.
According to the police, there were still two men aged 31 and 47 in the 43-year-old’s test car, as well as a 42-year-old and a one-and-a-half-year-old child. They were seriously injured along with other people involved in the accident. They came to clinics.
The car manufacturer BMW contradicted the information provided by the police on Tuesday, according to which the accident car was “an autonomous e-test vehicle”. A spokesman for the Munich car group said: “The vehicle has level 2 driver assistance systems, which are already installed in production vehicles and support the driver if desired. With Level 2 vehicles, the driver always remains responsible.”
Only in the case of highly automated vehicles from level 3 onwards can the driver fully delegate driving to the vehicle under certain conditions. A police spokesman was initially unable to comment on the request.
The investigation into the accident has taken over the traffic police Tübingen together with an expert. The rescue service was on site with four rescue helicopters and ten ambulances. In addition, 80 firefighters with 15 emergency vehicles moved out. The federal highway 28 was completely blocked for several hours as a result of the accident. The police estimate the damage to the vehicles involved at around 180,000 euros.
