Porsche driver Duarte Fraga may find the law on his side – but nowhere in this bizarre story involving an unspecified number of wild boar flying through the air to their deaths does anyone seem to have spared a thought for the animals.
This latest road horror took place on the A2 motorway just outside Grândola. It was 3.45am and Duarte Fraga was driving his swanky Porsche Panamera – at an unknown speed – towards Lisbon.
According to one news report, he suddenly felt a “bump on the left side and then saw two wild boar flying through the air”.
Another report talks about a bus in front of him having hit three of a wandering group of six boar, which were then “projected” against the northbound Porsche.
Whatever the details, the pigs came off worse – while the Porsche (starting price €94,000) suffered damages to the tune of €7,000. No one was hurt in the incident.
Duarte Fraga, described as a car salesman, is now trying to get compensation from Brisa, the company in charge of the motorway.
He says shoddy fencing caused the boar to get access to the road – and that Brisa’s maintenance is therefore at fault.
Deco backs him up, affirming that “when a consumer pays for a road toll, he is buying a service that assures comfort, speed and safety”.
But Brisa is apparently having none of it. Quoted in the Portuguese press, the company has rejected any notion of blame saying it “complied with its obligation to upkeep the road and its respective equipment and infrastructures” and that the “entry of the animals … was not a result of any lack of compliance with obligations”.
As for the animals, there were allegedly six of them. Three got away and, with any luck, will steer clear of the A2 and Porsche Panameras.
Brisa paid up in similar accident in 1999
As Fraga pursues Brisa for compensation, the Resident has found at least one other case where the road company has been ordered to pay-up over wild boar wandering on the motorway.
In 2009, the Tribunal de Alenquer found Brisa guilty of “not fulfilling its obligations to guarantee safe road travel” in the tragic case of a young woman driver, who died after her car hit a wild boar on the A1.
The parents of the girl told Lusa that they had tried for years to get compensation from Brisa, who had initially “refuted any responsibility for the accident”.
The dead girl’s father added that anyone who received similar treatment from Brisa in future should “have the courage” to go forwards and fight for compensation.
