A Polish court ordered an insurance company to fully compensate the family of a woman killed by a drunk driver, rejecting claims that unbuckled seatbelts justified slashing payouts. <\/p>\n
The tragic events occurred on April 20, 2024, in the afternoon on a provincial road in the \u015awi\u0119tokrzyskie Voivodeship. 66-year-old Victoria (name changed), who was driving correctly, was suddenly struck head-on by another driver who lost control of her speeding vehicle. The perpetrator had a blood alcohol concentration of 0.47 mg\/l (approx. 1 per mille). Experts subsequently concluded that Victoria practically had no possibility of avoiding the accident.<\/p>\n
The woman sustained extensive injuries. Still conscious, she was transported to the hospital where her head wound was stitched up. While being transported for an X-ray examination, the 66-year-old suffered a sudden cardiac arrest. Resuscitation brought no results, and Victoria passed away.<\/p>\n
The family of the deceased later turned to the insurance company covering the car driven by the perpetrator of the tragedy. The insurer granted Victoria’s son compensation of 27.6 thousand PLN and immediately reduced it by 30 percent, claiming that Victoria was not wearing a seatbelt, thereby contributing to her own death. Ultimately, 19.3 thousand PLN was transferred to the man.<\/p>\n
At the same time, the insurer refused to grant compensation to the woman’s two grandchildren, an 11-year-old girl and a 17-year-old boy. The company argued that “mourning for the deceased, despite typical suffering, did not cause significant disruptions in the personal lives” of the teenagers. This was particularly surprising given that Victoria was very close to her grandchildren, repeatedly cared for them, and the family spent holidays, family celebrations, and vacations together.<\/p>\n
The family decided to take the matter to court. The woman’s son demanded a total of 70 thousand PLN from the insurer, along with 12 thousand PLN for each of his children.<\/p>\n
As established, in February of this year, the District Court in Stasz\u00f3w ruled in favor of Victoria’s relatives. It assessed that the amount requested by the man was not exorbitant and deemed the amount paid by the insurer as “grossly understated.” It also indicated that it is justified for Victoria’s grandchildren to receive the money. In addition, the family is entitled to interest from the insurer calculated from 2024, when the company issued its first unfavorable decisions against the relatives of the deceased, as well as reimbursement of trial costs.<\/p>\n
The court also found no basis to assume that Victoria contributed to her own death, noting that it is not 100 percent certain whether she was wearing a seatbelt at the time of the accident, as experts were unable to determine this unequivocally. The court further noted that it was unknown whether there was any causal link between the seatbelt issue and Victoria’s death.<\/p>\n
However, the company refused to back down and filed an appeal.<\/p>\n
In mid-June, the Regional Court in Kielce dismissed the insurer’s appeal. The second-instance court, like the District Court, agreed that it is impossible to definitively determine whether the 66-year-old was wearing a seatbelt at the time of the accident. The Regional Court simultaneously noted that “more arguments support the position that she was not wearing these seatbelts,” but emphasized that in this specific case, it remained irrelevant.<\/p>\n
“It is impossible to determine what the consequences of the subject event would have been in a situation where [the deceased] had been wearing seatbelts, namely whether she would have survived the accident,” the Regional Court pointed out in its justification of the judgment.<\/p>\n
Citing experts, the court pointed out that “the effectiveness of seatbelts, i.e., their impact on reducing the degree of bodily injury and thus preventing death, depends on many factors such as: the type of road event, the direction and force of the collision, the number of collisions, vehicle damage, the type and generation of the vehicle, the victim’s location in the vehicle, individually variable tissue susceptibility to damage, and the area of the body where injuries occurred.”<\/p>\n
The court also recalled that the perpetrator of the accident was driving at a speed nearly 40 km\/h over the legal limit, was “under the influence of a significant amount of alcohol,” and “did not have a driving license.”<\/p>\n
In this situation, the court assessed that Victoria’s potential failure to wear a seatbelt did not justify reducing the amount of compensation for her son and grandchildren. The judgment of the Regional Court in Kielce is final.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Polish court ordered an insurance company to fully compensate the family of a woman killed by a drunk driver, rejecting claims that unbuckled seatbelts justified slashing payouts. Fatal Crash in \u015awi\u0119tokrzyskie The tragic events occurred on April 20, 2024, in the afternoon on a provincial road in the \u015awi\u0119tokrzyskie Voivodeship. 66-year-old Victoria (name changed), […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-and-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19500\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}