Trafic de idei

Nu strică uneori să ascultăm şi cealaltă parte (dacă ştim engleza, fiindcă presa de limbă română a fost cam unanimă).
Din cele de mai jos putem înţelege motivaţiile taximetristului care nu s-a prezentat ca martor. De asemenea, familia lui Teo Peter ar fi putut încerca să obţină despăgubiri de la cei care au “îngrijit” intersecţia. Sunt interesante şi comentariile referitoare la ancheta poliţiei române.
Din februarie 2005:

The mechanics of the wreck seemed rather routine, but it involved a minefield of international politics. Rick Dowsett had to tread lightly as he reconstructed the crash.

He wasn’t on familiar turf. He couldn’t speak the language. He wasn’t versed in international diplomacy.

But as a seasoned Virginia State Police crash-team investigator, he had the expertise the military needed to study a politically charged case that ruffled relations between the United States and Romania, a U.S. ally in the war in Iraq.

The circumstances were beyond anything Dowsett had previously investigated: A Marine staff sergeant stationed in Bucharest, driving a U.S. embassy vehicle, collided with a taxi carrying a popular Romanian rock star, killing him last December.

Allegations were immediately leveled at the Marine, who was accused in the Romanian press of drinking, speeding and failing to yield to the taxi that carried Teo Peter, the 50-year-old founding member of the Romanian rock band Compact….

The incident had U.S. military and State Department officials on guard. Susan Raser, a Naval Criminal Investigative Service supervisory special agent looking into the case, said U.S. authorities had no concerns about the ability of Romanian authorities to conduct an investigation. But they wanted someone like Dowsett to do an independent assessment and “verify that [the Romanian] methodology was sound, and we could trust their findings,” she said.

The NCIS asked Virginia State Police for help investigating the crash. Dowsett was assigned to reconstruct the Dec. 4 wreck, drawing on his years of experience and using sophisticated computer and surveying equipment unavailable in Romania or within the U.S. military….

The [Romanian] prosecutor’s office appointed its own expert — an engineer who taught at a local university — to work with Dowsett in reconstructing the crash. Dowsett said Romanian police were not involved with what he did and apparently are not trained in crash-reconstruction techniques.

Dowsett went to the crash site and took a few digital photographs to become familiar with the intersection.

Dowset was struck by how flawed and confusing the intersection was in terms of visibility and traffic control. Those problems contributed greatly to the crash, he said.

The intersection is controlled by a traffic signal but also has a stop sign for the road traveled by the Marine.

“During the day, you would ignore the stop sign if the light’s green,” Dowsett said. “At night, basically after midnight, it was the custom to put the lights on flash, and they flash amber in all four directions.”

The wreck occurred at 4:30 a.m.

To further complicate matters, the controlling stop sign was obscured by the trunk of a large tree that leaned toward the road. “You could miss the stop sign” unless you knew it was there, he said.

City officials had installed another stop sign about 40 feet across on the opposite side of the street, “in an attempt to get the driver’s attention,” Dowsett said.

The Romanian news accounts made no mention of the intersection’s flaws. [Not terribly surprising --Ed.]

Dowsett and the Romanian engineer also debunked allegations that the Marine had been speeding. The Romanian estimated the Marine’s Ford Expedition had been traveling about 40 kilometers per hour (24.8 mph) in 50-kph zone (31 mph). The engineer estimated the cab driver’s vehicle, a tiny subcompact known as a Dacia, was in fact speeding, traveling 43 kph (26.6 mph) in a 30-kph zone (18.6 mph).

Dowsett’s speed calculations were slightly higher but “very close” to the Romanian’s, he said.

The Marine had been drinking alcohol earlier but the amount was negligible, Dowsett said. “His blood-alcohol content was not enough, by the police statement, for them to take action. Nor would it have been enough had he been here.”

In the end, Dowsett said, his view of the wreck didn’t vary greatly from the Romanian engineer’s version of events.

“But the problem was, their focus was very narrow — find out who caused the harmful event, what moment did it happen, and that’s all they look at,” Dowsett said. “They’re not taking into consideration, like we would here, that a vehicle [the cab] speeding down the highway loses its right of way and contributes to the crash.

“They’re only looking at: If the [Marine] had stopped at the stop sign, the crash wouldn’t have happened — period.”

Backing up the crash four seconds, Dowsett calculated the cab would have missed colliding with the Marine’s vehicle by 40 feet had the cab been traveling the speed limit.

Dowsett said it’s hard to say whether the Marine would have been charged for a similar wreck in this country. Reckless driving could apply, but even that might not be pursued depending on how the local prosecutor’s office viewed the case.