The Board of Inquiry of the Accident Investigation Board recommended to the Ministry of Transport and Communications the construction of middle railings already after the 2004 accident.
Middle railing would have prevented Konginkangas from being killed with “fairly certain certainty”, says Criminal Commissioner, Kari Aaltio About the police in Inner Finland.
“The angle of the collision with the railing would not have been very big, and the car would not have gone through the railing, but the car that had slipped would have remained on its own side after hitting it. If there had been side contact with the truck, everyone would have survived. Instead, when cars collide in completely opposite directions, the trace is this, ”says Aaltio.
At what happened on Nelostie on Sunday two adult men from southern Finland died in the accident.
Accident occurred when a passenger car traveling from south to north entered the bypass, with the intention of overtaking a truck in front of it. The car drifted into the oncoming lane, where it crashed with the oncoming passenger car. There were three people in both cars.
The fatalities were in a passing car. In addition, four people were injured in the accident.
The injured were taken to Jyväskylä Central Hospital on Sunday. The injuries of one injured require surgical treatment. The other injured were, according to police, undergoing an inspection at the hospital.
“The injured are not life-threatening, and they have all been able to talk to them,” Aaltio says.
Aaltio does not comment further on the age of the dead or injured. He also did not comment on whether there had been family members or friends in the cars, for example.
In addition, the truck being overtaken and the car behind the passing car were damaged in the accident. According to Aaltio, the guesswork is that the truck driver noticed the situation in front of him and braked, when a car driving behind him collided with him from behind.
The truck did not collide with other means of transport and did not derail.
Place of accident is at the Konginkangas agglomeration in Äänekoski in central Finland. It is an uphill section of road that curves slightly to the right on top of a hill. On the same stretch of road, a devastating crash of a bus and a paper truck in 2004 killed 23 people.
The 2004 accident happened on a downhill slope. Now the accident happened on a hill.
“The place is not the same for its meter, but the hill and the road section are the same,” says Aaltio.
At the time of the accident, the road surface was icy and the weather was cloudy. According to police data, the bypass was un plowed at the time of the accident. On Monday morning, Aaltio did not yet have exact information about when the section had been plowed the last time.
Accident Investigation Board The (Otkes) Board of Inquiry recommended to the Ministry of Transport and Communications (LVM) the construction of middle railings already after the 2004 accident.
The board estimated that the middle railing would have prevented the accident at the time. Leading researcher Kai Valonen Otkes states that the recommendation concerned the road network in general.
In addition, the board recommended that road lighting be increased, for example, on road sections with a high traffic volume and on sections with heavy heavy traffic.
“In practice, the matter is currently handled by the Finnish Railways Agency and the local ELY centers, but the funding and guidelines will certainly come to them through a political decision from the state budget,” Valonen says in an e-mail.
Kari Aaltio from the Inland Finland Police wonders why the safety of the road section has not been improved on the basis of Otkes’ recommendations.
“Otkes’ reports are well drafted and the recommendations are certainly justified. The question arises that when medium railings were recommended in 2004 and now 18 years have passed, what is the weight of the reports in our country? The reports are not for fun but to improve security. ”
Why not The improvements recommended by Otkes have not been made in 18 years?
Director General of the Central Finland ELY Center Jukka Lehtinen says the reason is money. In 2010, a road plan was approved, the planning of which began after the 2004 accident. The intention was to install middle lanes at old bypasses on the section of Highway 4 from Äänekoski to Viitasaari.
Due to the lack of funding, the plan was not implemented. About 21 million was allocated to the plan in last year’s budget, so the improvement can finally be made. Before that, small filings are made to the plan. According to Lehtinen, the estimate for the start of construction is 2023.
“It’s not just about improving one point. Highway 4 is the main connecting highway and is intended to develop the entire highway. Accidents happen in several places along the way, ”says Lehtinen.
Konginkangas the improvement of the two bypass lanes at.
Kai Valonen says that Otkes will monitor the implementation of its recommendations for ten years.
“We have marked the recommendation for middle railings as having been implemented in due course, because we have been described as having abundant construction of middle railings on main roads. That’s when we ended up building quite a lot of them and also on the four-lane road. Of course, we understand that building every place would be a very big effort and cost.“
As regards lighting, Otkes has been told by LVM that it will not be implemented at that point.
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