AIS crash verdict: "German law was applied"

By Hedwig Kröner

In the recently announced judgment of the legal case against Stephanie Magner, 19, who caused the fatal road accident in July last year, killing Australian Institute of Sport rider Amy Gillett and injuring five of her team-mates, the Chief Public Prosecutor of Gera, Germany, told Cyclingnews that German adult criminal law was applied. Previous reports had speculated that because of the young age of the driver, the milder youth criminal law might have been applied. Magner was sentenced to a fine of 1440 Euros and eight months disqualification from driving, a punishment that Amy Gillett's father Denis Safe has described as "pathetic and insulting".

When Cyclingnews asked Mundt if he could relate to the consternation of the victims' families and friends faced with the relatively mild sentence, he said, "I can understand it on one hand. But in Germany, German criminal law is applied; even though I have also heard that in Australia, there are much greater punishments for that kind of offence. We had to rule on this case using German law, and it is in accordance with similar cases."

More than six months after the terrible accident, the investigation of what had caused Magner, who had just received her driving license, to lose control of her vehicle could still not provide a concrete explanation. "We do not know the exact causes," the German prosecutor said. "She was driving along a light left hand bend, and drifted a little bit to the right hand side. Her driving was neither too fast, nor was she using her cellphone - we checked that. Now, an experienced driver in the same situation would have turned the steering wheel only lightly to get back into the right position, but apparently she turned it around too abruptly and her vehicle started skidding. At the time of this first mistake - driving too far to the right - she could not yet see the group of cyclists because of the road bend. In her surprise, she turned the wheel around too rapidly and then drifted into the riders sideways."