Communicated on 15 April 2015
THIRD SECTION
Application no. 17322/14
Ana Irina VARGA and Lucia Angela VAIDA
against Romania
lodged on 17 February 2014
STATEMENT OF FACTS
The applicants, Ms Ana Irina Varga and Ms Lucia Angela Vaida, are Romanian nationals, who were born in 1972 and 1975 respectively and live in Baia Mare.
The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicants, may be summarised as follows.
On 18 January 2009, at about 2.50 p.m. the applicants’ father was hit by a car while attempting to cross the road. He died on 4 February 2009 as a result of his serious bodily injuries caused by the accident.
On the day of the accident the Trip Police Department questioned the driver of the car, his passenger and the victim of the accident. The driver stated that he had been caught by surprise and could not avoid the accident when the applicants’ father had crossed the street.
The police initiated an investigation against the car driver for unintentional killing. The applicants expressed their intention to claim civil damages in the framework of the proceedings should the car driver be proven guilty.
Two other witnesses, who had arrived at the scene of the accident after the accident, were questioned on 2 March and 11 May 2009 respectively.
On 21 September 2009 the prosecutor ordered a technical report. The expert report was completed on 29 November 2010. It stated that the dynamics of the accident or the car’s speed before and at the time of impact with the victim could not be determined because there were no traces of braking. However, it concluded, based on an estimate, that had the driver observed the legal speed limit of 50 km per hour and used the brake immediately after he became aware of the danger, he could have avoided the accident.
On 23 May 2011 the prosecutor’s office attached to the Negrești Oaș District Court Decision decided to discontinue the investigation. It concluded that the exclusive responsibility for the accident belonged to the victim who had crossed the road through an area that did not allow pedestrian crossing and without taking the required precautions. It held that the car had a speed of 30-35 km per hour according to the statements given by the car driver and his passenger.
The applicants challenged the conclusions of the technical expert report and the prosecutor’s decision claiming that the investigation was incomplete.
On 12 July 2011 the chief prosecutor quashed the decision to discontinue the investigation. He instructed the prosecutor in charge to order a new expert report as the speed of the car involved in the accident had only been established on the basis of witnesses’ statements.
The investigation was resumed.
On 29 March 2013 a new expert report was produced. It stated that the car had had a speed of 40 km per hour. The speed was based on an estimate of the damage caused to the car by the accident. The report concluded that the accident could not have been avoided.
On 29 May 2013 the prosecutor’s office attached to the Negrești Oaș District Court decided to discontinue the investigation on the grounds that the accident was exclusively caused by the victim as he had not observed the safety regulations.
The applicants lodged a complaint against the prosecutor’s decision. They argued that the car should have had a speed of 30 km per hour because the road was covered with melting snow. They also contested the conclusions of the expert reports, indicating that they could not be relied on, given that the experts had never visited the site of the accident and based their conclusions on estimate and abstract calculation.
On 22 July 2013 the chief prosecutor dismissed the complaint as ill‑founded.
The applicants lodged a complaint with the competent court.
On 18 October 2013 the Negrești Oaș District Court dismissed the applicants’ complaint concluding that all the available evidence indicated that the fault of the accident lay with the applicants’ deceased father and that there was no need to produce a new expert report. It held that the driver had not broken any driving regulations at the time of the accident.
COMPLAINT
The applicants complain under Articles 2 and 6 § 1 of the Convention that the domestic authorities failed to carry out an effective investigation of the car accident which had caused their father’s death. In particular, they complain about the length of the investigation. They also contended that both technical expert reports were incomplete and based on abstract calculations instead of an examination of the scene of the accident.
QUESTION TO THE PARTIES
Having regard to the procedural protection of the right to life, was the investigation in the present case compatible with the State’s obligation under Article 2 of the Convention to carry out an effective investigation into the death of the applicants’ father (Anna Todorova v. Bulgaria, no. 23302/03, § 72, 24 May 2011)?
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