A vehicle that “accelerated suddenly and unexpectedly” as it approached the toll gate collided head-on with three cars.
Three people lost their lives and six others were injured this Sunday afternoon in a violent accident on the Italian A12 motorway, near the port city of Livorno, in Tuscany.
According to Italian media, a German-registered car “accelerated suddenly and unexpectedly” as it approached the toll barrier and crashed into the queue.
The victims are a German couple aged 61 and 68 and a young Italian aged 21.
The occupants of this car, Fendt Robert Friendrich, 61, and Maria Cornelia Schubert, 68, of German nationality, were killed instantly. The young Florentine Marco Acciai, 21, on board the first car hit, also died.
Read also :
Terrible accident at the toll booth: The vehicle accelerates before the barrier, hits the line of cars and overturns the cabin, three dead and six injured
Video surveillance images (video below) published this Tuesday by the motorway company show the German couple’s Honda HRV “cutting” through the queues at the toll booth and rushing into one of the lanes violently propelling the Fiat 500 of the young Italian couple against the guardrails.
Autopsies
According to the local daily La Nazione, investigators’ calculations seem to indicate that the car in question was traveling at 150 km/h at the time of the impact. At this speed, the vehicle literally took off after the first collision, hit the toll booth before falling on a Hyundai SUV belonging to a Ukrainian family, who had just paid and was about to cross the barrier.
Six people were also injured during the collision: two children aged 3 and 6, as well as their parents in the second car in the line, the driver of the Fiat 500, companion of the deceased young man, and the employee who was in the toll booth.
The bodies of the two German nationals will be autopsied to determine whether a medical problem (such as a heart attack or stroke) could have been the cause of the tragedy, adds La Nazione.
The possibility of a mechanical breakdown has also not been ruled out.
