Cologne: concrete wall kills car driver in Cologne: woman identified

Suburb –

What is still inexplicable hours later for everyone happens on Friday at 10.15 am on one of the busiest sections of the motorway in Germany. A 66-year-old woman from Cologne is driving on the right lane of the A3 in Dellbrück, coming from the south, when suddenly, just before a tram bridge, a section of concrete several meters high and about five tons is released from the noise barrier and falls. The plaque buries the little black car beneath it, the driver takes a hit to the upper body and head. He died instantly. A witness tried to help the woman, but it turned out to be useless. The ambulance service takes him to the hospital in shock.

The enormous weight of the concrete slab and the speed of travel did not give the woman a chance to survive. “We have to assume that an enormous amount of energy has acted on the vehicle,” says a police spokesman at the scene.

Recovery on the A3 in Cologne takes several hours

For the men and women of the fire department and police, a very complicated mission begins that will last several hours. A total of 30 firefighters and paramedics arrive at the scene of the accident. A rescue helicopter is alerted, but may back up because a fire engine crane is sufficient. First, the traffic jam is diverted into a single lane at the crash site before the highway is completely closed until late afternoon.

Meanwhile, the crane lifts the heavy load of the small VW Polo and a gondola lowers the plate. Then the firefighters begin to rescue the victim. To do this, the crane transports the accident vehicle several meters from the concrete wall. At this point, no one knows if the other panels on the wall are still dangerous, if they could be unstable as well.

The woman can only be rescued about two and a half hours after the accident. Soon after, the crashed vehicle is also towed away.

Research has begun on the noise barrier

At the same time, the first investigations of the acoustic barrier are being carried out. It is about finding the cause of the accident. Structural engineers at the State Roads Office in North Rhine-Westphalia examine the slabs, and in the afternoon the road is partially released again.

Until then, the result will be traffic chaos with considerable traffic jams on almost every street and highway in eastern Cologne; sometimes KVB lines 3, 13 and 18, which cross the highway on the bridge just behind the crash site, must be separated. The two lanes on the right are now blocked in both directions between the Köln-Ost junction and the Dellbrück exit, so that all the walls there in a length of 2.1 kilometers can be checked for possible damage. It is not yet clear how long the exam will take. The traffic accident registration team and the police detective office also begin work.

Periodic visual inspection of noise barriers in NRW

Noise protection walls of the same type as at the crash site have been installed elsewhere, according to a spokesman for the State Roads Office in North Rhine-Westphalia. An overview cannot currently be given. “Our noise barriers, of course, are examined as part of the visual inspection of the riots,” the spokesman said. That happens regardless of the tragic accident on Friday. “Make sure we now refocus our attention.” No one should worry about driving on the highway at the scene of the accident because the right lanes are blocked.

In North Rhine-Westphalia there are noise barriers of various construction methods along around 1000 kilometers of federal highways and highways. In the next week, the state government in the transportation committee of the state parliament will discuss whether they can pose dangers and what dangers they can pose in a current quarter of an hour. The SPD parliamentary group requested it.

Noise should be reduced by channel location and whispered asphalt

The A3 runs between the Köln-Ost and Dellbrück junctions in an area called low. This means that a cut was made in the land for the construction of the highway and that there are concrete walls to the right and left of the road. The actual noise protection walls are mounted on top of the concrete retaining walls, the walls themselves are equipped with noise protection elements.

This so-called channel location is the exception rather than the rule for noise barriers. It is very close to a tunnel solution. To further reduce noise, so-called whispered asphalt was used on the lanes, which had to be renovated in 2015. The expansion of the A3 between the Heumar motorway junction and the Leverkusen junction from south to north to expand from six Eight lanes began with the turn of the millennium. It had been three-lane since the 1980s, and with a traffic volume of up to 160,000 vehicles a day, it had long since reached the limit of its capacity.

The first 2.8 km section between the Heumar triangle and the East Cross was completed in June 2005. The area between Cologne-East and the Cologne-Dellbrück junction where the fatal accident occurred took place between May 2005 and August 2008.

This was followed by sections from Dellbrück to Cologne-Mülheim (2.3 kilometers) until spring 2017, completed in July 2012. After a three-year break, section four to Leverkusen-Zentrum was tackled. The last section is in the Leverkusen city area and is currently being planned.
The process of accepting this unprecedented accident has only just begun.