The majority of witnesses heard at Croatian Deputy Prime Minister Radimir Cacic's trial in Kaposvar, Hungary for causing a traffic accident with two casualties on Wednesday denied the defence's claims that the road was slippery on that day in January 2010 and that fog made driving difficult.
The witnesses at the second hearing of the trial in which Cacic faces up to five years' imprisonment were police officers and firefighters who came to the scene and a driver who was driving by.
Gyuzu Sifter, a policeman who wrote a report on the accident and talked with the driver whose car Cacic had hit, said visibility on the site was good and that the road was not slippery, despite light rain.
Defence counsel objected by saying that his report did not contain any observation about the weather or some other details from the scene.
Firemen Viktor Noviczky and Peter Szapanos could not remember it being foggy at the time of the accident. They had to use pliers to pry open the smashed Skoda to rescue the victims. Szapanos could not recall if the passengers were wearing safety belts as he pried the car open.
"I don't remember the details," he said when the judge showed him photos which did not show that the belts were cut through.
Responding to a question, he could not remember if there were any other accidents on that road on the day in question, which Cacic claimed earlier on.
The firemen also denied the defence's claims that they did not turn off the lights on the smashed Skoda.
The defence will call a traffic expert because it is dissatisfied with initial findings that Cacic was driving too fast and inappropriately to the conditions on the road.
The Skoda which Cacic smashed into with his Chrysler on the Nagykanisza-Budapest motorway in January 2010 was driven by Katalin Liptak. She and Zoltanne Hitter survived the crash but her 81-year-old mother and 60-year-old husband were killed.
