The roads of Majorca have claimed another fatality. A 46-year-old Spanish man lost his life yesterday when he was hit by a truck on the MA-19 motorway to Llucmajor from Palma.
The accident occurred at around 5.30am at the 8.7 kilometre mark on the motorway by Can Pastilla. The man, identified as José Manuel Gomez Medén, was walking on the hard shoulder for reasons as yet unknown. A truck carrying drinks hit him with its wing mirror, leaving him seriously injured.
Paramedics from the 061 ambulance emergency service and officers from the Guardia Civil's Trafico division were quickly in attendance, but his injuries were of such gravity that he died at the scene
At 5.30 it was still dark. There is no lighting on this stretch of the road and the deceased was walking on the hard shoulder in dark clothing. It is thought that he was able to get onto the motorway by leaping over the railing of a nearby walk bridge.
One of the survivors of the motorway accident near the Portals Nous exit on Saturday, 21-year-old Bulgarian Iva Emilova Yakimova, remains in a highly critical condition in Son Espases Hospital's Intensive Care Unit. There were signs of slight improvement yesterday, but doctors are not wishing to raise false expectations.
Police sources said today that excessive speed and loss of control by the driver are being blamed for the fatal accident. According to the Guardia Civil’s Tráfico division, everything points to the fact that the crash was caused by high speed on a downward stretch of the motorway. The BMW Series 3 Cabrio collided with a motorcycle, leaving three people dead, two of them occupants of the car and the motorcyclist.
The driver of the BMW was given a blood test under a protocol by which hospitals can conduct such a test. In addition, the institute of legal medicine is to undertake tests of the victims and send these to the judicial authority.
Throughout Sunday morning, Guardia officers collected evidence at the crash area and undertook a visual inspection of the BMW in order to assess if the driver had been reckless. Although the investigation is not finished, after analysing brake skid marks, the main hypothesis drawn is that high speed was the cause. Officers are also studying images from motorway cameras in order to try and establish the approximate speed at which the car was travelling.
The accident occurred at 5.15pm. The car ended up in pine forest some fifty metres from where the collision with the motorcyclist occurred. Witnesses have come forward and said that the BMW was travelling at a “foolhardy” speed and that the car “did something strange” as the motorcycle was being overtaken before hitting the motorcyclist and taking him with it.