Man, 36, dies as car hits overpass pillar near Indjija

A driver was killed on Thursday on the stretch of road running from Indjija toward the motorway. The crash near Indjija happened around midday, on a section drivers locally call the deviation, directly under an overpass.

The wrecked car was found in the grass beside the roadway, with a man’s body inside. The victim was L. V., 36, from Novi Sad.

First indications are that the car ran off the road and struck a concrete pillar supporting the overpass. What sent the vehicle off the roadway has not been established.

A car found off the roadway

The timing was reported differently in the first hours. An official account put the crash at around 12 p.m., while some outlets said the car was found around 1 p.m. The vehicle had come to rest off the road, in the grass, so what has been released so far does not separate the moment it left the road from the moment someone spotted it.

Police, firefighters and an ambulance crew went to the scene. Paramedics could do nothing but confirm the driver’s death.

An on-site investigation was carried out to establish the circumstances. Everything released so far refers to one vehicle and one victim, with no other injuries reported.

Did the driver collapse, or did the impact kill him?

That question had no answer in the first hours. It was not clear whether the driver was taken ill at the wheel and ran off the road as a result, or whether he died from the impact against the pillar.

The distinction is not a formality. It decides how the case is handled from here:

• if the driver lost consciousness or died before leaving the road, this is a death from medical causes, and the crash is the consequence
• if death came in the impact, it is a road fatality
• a third scenario, a mechanical failure for instance, would take the file in another direction

In every version, there is no second party who would be a suspect at this point. The car was alone on the road toward the motorway, and it hit a fixed object at the edge of the carriageway.

What comes after the site investigation

The autopsy provides the answer. It shows whether death came from injuries sustained in the impact or from a cause that preceded the car leaving the road. Alongside it comes expert analysis, based on marks on the asphalt, the resting position of the car and the damage to it.

Until those findings, the cause of the crash near Indjija remains formally undetermined, as stated after the site investigation was completed. Anything before that is an assumption, and it is recorded as one.

A concrete pillar at the edge of the road

The site has one feature visible in the photograph taken there: the concrete pillar of the overpass stands immediately beside the road corridor. A car that leaves the asphalt at that point has no run-off space to absorb the departure, and reaches a rigid structure within a short distance.

That is why the outcome differs from a run-off on a stretch where the car ends up in grass or in a ditch. The damage to the car found beside the road near Indjija matches an impact against an unyielding obstacle rather than a roll down an embankment.

What pulled the car off the road is now for the autopsy and the expert analysis to settle. Until then, the only firmly established facts are that one man died in the crash near Indjija, a 36-year-old driver from Novi Sad, and that the site investigation has been completed.