The prosecutor wants a 33-year-old woman who last August killed a German motorcyclist on the E4 highway outside Gävle to be sentenced to prison. The issue will now be reviewed by the Court of Appeal.

At lunchtime on August 29 last year, the alarm came in about a traffic accident on the E4 highway north of Gävle. At a roadwork site, a motorcyclist had been hit by a car.

“I was just going to”

When the police arrive at the scene, they are met by a wrecked car and a demolished motorcycle. On the road lies a man with a motorcycle helmet and clothes, described by a witness as “stone dead.”

A blonde woman in her 30s stands on the road, crying hysterically. It is she who, with her car, ran into the now deceased motorcyclist from behind, a 25-year-old man from Germany, as he, like other traffic, slowed down for the roadwork.

“I was just going to change the radio,” the woman says.

“I only looked away for a moment.”

“At least I wasn’t using my phone.”

Using her mobile phone

But her excuses are false. The female driver was using her mobile phone at the time of the accident. Among other things, she took a so-called selfie and sent it to a friend.

“I’m driving and half asleep,” she writes.

According to technical evidence secured from the mobile phone, she was also using the Facebook and Instagram apps.

Despite this, Gävle District Court in March this year settled for convicting the 33-year-old woman of causing another person’s death and negligence in traffic of normal degree. The penalty imposed was a suspended sentence and 150 daily fines.

Wants her to face prison

However, prosecutor Peter Olofsson has appealed the lenient sentence against the 33-year-old woman. He demands that she be sentenced to prison for gross negligence causing another person’s death and gross negligence in traffic.

“A ban on drivers of motor vehicles using a mobile phone while driving was introduced on October 1, 2018, if the use had a detrimental effect on driving. Regardless of the impact, drivers were prohibited from using a handheld mobile phone,” he writes in his appeal.

Olofsson argues that it is particularly serious to use a mobile phone while driving at a speed of one hundred kilometers per hour on a major road.

“A brief moment of inattention at that speed can have serious consequences,” he writes, arguing that this is a “deliberate and serious risk-taking.”

The case will now be reviewed by the Court of Appeal for Lower Norrland, but so far, no date for the main hearing has been set.