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Serious Crimes Case (Be’er Sheva) 33815-10-23 State of Israel v. Ahmad Abu al-Qi’an - part 75

September 6, 2026
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This answer of the witness regarding the "acceptable" or "expected" manner of conduct of a person who notices a vehicle that is about to hit him, is a mere argument that has not been substantiated in any way, it is not part of the witness's expertise, and it certainly cannot rule out a possible scenario of changing body position while avoiding hitting a vehicle.

The very existence of a table in the examiners' book in which there is an estimate of the speed of a pedestrian's body rotation in cases where it is not possible to estimate the speed of a crossover for the purpose of performing a reconstruction (attached to the summaries of the claim, p.  78), shows that such a scenario is possible, not only is it possible, but it is one that the examiner is obligated to take into account given certain circumstances.  The manner in which the witness decisively answered things that are not in his area of expertise is consistent with his other answers, in which he outright rejected any thesis that is inconsistent with his calculations.  It is precise from the witness's own words that he is familiar with the examiners' book, and therefore it is presumed that he should have known about the existence of this table.

Another example of the difficulty that arises from the witness's answers can be found in the way he replied to the plaintiff when he was presented with a possible scenario whereby the defendant intended to continue straight when he reached the intersection, but while driving he noticed the deceased and shifted the steering wheel to the right in order to hit him.  According to the witness, "What the plaintiff is describing at the moment is quite parallel to calculating the movement of an arrow, the speed of a ballistic missile, which the prosecutor says at the moment that the defendant saw the deceased and then decided to enter it and he calculated the deceased's trajectory up to the point of impact and hit him at the point he decided.  I don't think it's reasonable, certainly not for the defendant who didn't, certainly for a person who didn't learn complex ballistic calculations" (p.  446).  With all due respect, one does not have to be a rocket scientist or a mechanical engineer to run over a person with a vehicle or to turn right in order to hit him as soon as the deceased is observed by him.  The comparison made by the defense expert between the relevant ballistic calculations to the encounter of objects moving towards each other at a speed of thousands of kilometers per hour, to the situation of a vehicle traveling at 40 kilometers per hour (at most) towards a person walking on the sidewalk or crossing the road, is not relevant to the matter.  More than it provides an answer to the plaintiff's question, it teaches his unwillingness to accept or examine in a matter-of-fact manner any thesis that is inconsistent with the one he holds.

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