The case of Paweł Kozanecki, a lawyer who talked about “coffins on wheels”. A surprising court decision regarding the “black box”

The tragedy occurred on September 26, 2021 on the Barczewo – Jeziorany route around 5:40 p.m. Attorney Paweł Kozanecki (he agreed to provide full details and present his image) was returning from a wedding with his wife and four-year-old son. There were two women in the second car – 53- and 67-year-olds. That afternoon they went to visit the family (the children of the deceased women are married).

The case became famous after the lawyer posted a video on the Internet in which he stated that the women in the Audi died because they were “riding a coffin on wheels.” The lawyer advised that it would be better to save up or borrow money for a better car. Although three years have passed since the tragedy, the first-instance trial is still ongoing.

Read also: He talked about “coffins on wheels”, he lost his license to practice his profession again

At the end of November, the Central Forensic Laboratory of the Police received a letter from the Olsztyn court, in which the expert who reconstructed the course of the tragedy involving the Łódź lawyer was instructed to re-issue his opinion. Previous – as we were the first to report on tvn24.pl – indicated the fault of attorney Kozanecki, who was supposed to block the women driving from the opposite direction and not give them any chance to avoid an accident.

Now we have learned that the court has requested another opinion – but this time the expert is to base it “solely on the basis of material and personal evidence, excluding IT data obtained from reading the controllers from the accused's car.”

This means that the expert from the police laboratory is to ignore the readings from the “black box” in the accused's Mercedes. This is important because thanks to it it was possible to recreate what happened in the last seconds before the collision. The read data indicated that the Mercedes was accelerating (from approximately 60 to 66 km/h) and the car's steering wheel was tilted to the left five seconds before the tragedy. One and a half seconds before the tragedy, attorney Kozanecki allegedly yanked the steering wheel to the right, which – in the original opinion – was considered a late attempt to return to his lane. An expert from CLKP indicated that the collected data matched the damage to the crashed cars and the traces found at the scene of the incident.

So where did the court's idea come from to reconstruct the accident data excluding the data from the recorder? During the ongoing trial in Olsztyn, attorney Władysław Marczewski, defense attorney of the accused Paweł Kozanecki, called the expert's opinion on the reconstruction of the accident “extremely unprofessional” and “prepared for a specific thesis.” He questioned, among other things, the data obtained from the recorder. During the hearing in April this year. referred to a publication from February 2022 prepared by two experts recognized in Poland in the field of mechanoscopy and car mechanics. This is a publication titled “Data translation defects in Bosch CDR post-accident reports”.

We have reached this publication. The authors point out that in the case of “black boxes” there are “translation defects” that may mislead people analyzing data during court proceedings. Faced with this information, the court ordered an expert to reconstruct the accident without taking into account the data about which experts raised doubts.

Did the Olsztyn court do the right thing? We contacted Michał Krzemiński, one of the authors of the publication on the basis of which the court instructed the expert to ignore the black box. Our interlocutor briefly states that this is a “surprising decision” because – as he emphasized – the purpose of the research described in the publication was not to undermine trust in electronic traces of the accident.

– It's exactly the opposite. For several years now, “black boxes” have made it possible to recreate the circumstances of road accidents more precisely than ever before. The publication was intended to help people use this source of data more consciously, and not to question the validity of their use. This is a dangerous precedent, he emphasizes.

Michał Krzemiński emphasizes that – despite the cases of errors in reading data from “black boxes” described in 2022 – this is a source of reliable evidence. – We described problems that can be eliminated at the stage of data collection and analysis. We wanted to help develop good practices in this field and show that we do not run away from the problems that always arise when a young field of science develops – says the expert.

According to the expert, “black boxes” are as important a source of knowledge about accidents as traces left on the road or cars broken after a collision. – They are a more valuable because they are an objective source of knowledge, which cannot be said about eyewitness accounts. They may be imprecise and even contradict the evidence, even when the witness has good intentions, he points out.

Michał Krzemiński also warns against criticizing the Olsztyn court for its decision. – Recorders are still new. I have participated in many training sessions with prosecutors and judges, during which we point out how important a source of knowledge data recorders are. Unfortunately, this is still not common knowledge, he notes.

How did the expert from the Central Forensic Laboratory of the Police react to the court's request to conduct an analysis without the data from the “black box”? In a letter addressed to the court, he emphasized that ignoring the registrar's indications “would not affect the final conclusions of the prepared opinion.”

Read also: A lawyer will be brought to court for causing the death of two women. After the tragedy, he talked about “coffins on wheels”.

The expert emphasized that when reconstructing the course of the fatal accident, he relied primarily on traces left on the road. And these – as he noted – clearly indicate that the collision occurred on the lane on which the Audi was driving, in which two women died. An expert from CLKP argues that this clearly blames the lawyer driving the Mercedes, who left his lane.

The expert noted that the Central Forensic Laboratory of the Police performs tests “based on the full evidence” and notes that the data from the Mercedes' recorder are “objective and precise information about the course of the accident.” He also emphasized that the data cannot be manipulated and the process of downloading it is “standardized and based on ISO standards.”

The recorder recorded that immediately before the collision the Mercedes accelerated – from about 60 to about 66 km/h. The expert indicated that five seconds before the accident, the car driven by Mr. Kozanecki was deviated to the left from the straight-ahead direction.

“The steering wheel was set at an angle of 10 degrees to the left from the straight-ahead position,” the expert reported in his analysis.

Three and a half seconds before impact, the turn was said to have deepened to the left to 22 degrees. The last one and a half seconds is a return turn – to the right. “Steering wheel turn to 12 degrees.” – he pointed.

The expert estimated that at the moment of the collision the Audi was traveling at a speed of 64 km/h. The speed limit at the accident site is 70 km/h.

In the original reconstruction of the tragic accident from 2021, the expert indicates that – in addition to the “black box” indications – the evidence at the scene of the incident also points to attorney Paweł Kozanecki's guilt.

Sand was found scattered on the lane where the Audi was driving. The expert stated that it fell off the left front wheel arches of both vehicles at the time of the collision. In addition, the expert noticed traces of the Mercedes wheels. Their beginning was in the lane of the victims' car, near the place of collision. These traces extended into the lane where the Mercedes should have been driving and ended near its wheels, where it stopped.

The expert found that the post-accident arrangement of the vehicles also left no doubt that it was the lawyer from Łódź who left his lane and caused the accident – the Mercedes he was driving was turned counterclockwise after the accident, and the Audi fell into a roadside ditch.

According to an expert from CLKP, a woman whose lawyer from Łódź cut her off on the road had no chance to react. In the opinion disclosed to the court, the expert indicated that the human body needs from 0.8 to 1 second to correctly assess the threat and take defensive actions. An expert from the Central Forensic Laboratory of the Police noted that even if the driver of the Audi had managed to press the brake at that time, an additional 0.3 seconds would have been needed for the system to start working.

During the investigation, the accused lawyer's wife provided her version of events. She claimed that immediately before the accident her husband was driving in accordance with the regulations:

“I am sure that the collision occurred in our lane, on a straight section of the road. Before the incident, both my husband and I were looking at the road, my husband did not perform any activities that could distract his attention,” we read in the testimony quoted in the opinion of the expert who reconstructed course of the tragedy.

She explained that the Mercedes had systems installed that warn against crossing the lane by shaking the steering wheel.

Attorney Władysław Marczewski, defense attorney of the accused Paweł Kozanecki, in April this year called the original opinion of the CLKP expert on the reconstruction of the accident “extremely unprofessional”. Why?

– I don't want to judge my client's words about “coffins on wheels”. What shouldn't have happened happened. However, I do not understand why the opinion does not mention that the technical condition of the Audi could have had a key impact on what happened that day – the lawyer told tvn24.pl after the hearing in the first half of 2024.

He then said that the Audi “was a foldable”. – This results directly from the records of the Central Register of Vehicles and Drivers. The body had to be separated from the chassis and drive system of the vehicle and then reassembled. For this reason alone, it was not a vehicle with factory technical characteristics. In addition, the vehicle had a collision in July and an inspection in August. Between one event and the next, its course decreased. The car was in such a condition that the headlight, battery and entire radiator fell out of it during the accident – the lawyer calculated.

The lawyer also questions the expert's calculations regarding the speed of the vehicles. – The appointed expert tried to match the evidence collected in the case to the version accepted from the beginning that my client was guilty. It was the doubts I raised that made the court request a supplementary opinion – said the defense lawyer.

While working on the article, we tried several times to contact the accused lawyer's lawyer. Unfortunately, these attempts were not effective.