Preliminary exam testimony details speed in 2023 fatal crash

ADRIAN — A pickup was traveling between 61 and 66 mph on a Macon Township road when it collided with another pickup and killed the four paving company employees in it on Labor Day 2023.

That was the calculation of a Michigan State Police traffic crash reconstructionist who testified in a preliminary examination that started Monday in Lenawee County District Court. Matt Allan Koester, 56, of Palmyra Township is charged with four counts of reckless driving causing the death. The exam will continue July 30 before Judge Laura J. Schaedler. Koester’s attorney, Vincent Haisha of Detroit, told the court he may call his own expert witness and the trooper who is the lead investigator.

Schaedler will decide if there is enough evidence for the case to proceed to Lenawee County Circuit Court for further proceedings.

Robert Fox, 35, Ryan Shirley, 33, and Jaiden Taylor, 18, all of Adrian, and Cole Weber, 23, of Hudson died in the collision, according to district court records. The four were in a K&B Asphalt Sealcoating work pickup when the crash with Koester’s pickup happened at 10:30 a.m. September 4, 2023, at the intersection of Milwaukee Road at Britton Highway in Macon Township. Koester is accused of “willful or wanton disregard of the stop sign” for eastbound Milwaukee Road at the intersection with Britton Highway.

State police Sgt. Gregory Kamp was the only witness who testified Monday. Assistant Lenawee County Prosecutor Dave McCreedy led him through his crash reconstruction investigation, which relied on GPS data from Koester’s Ford F250 pickup. Ordinarily, Kamp explained, he would use data from the air bag control module, which records a vehicle’s speed and includes precrash data such as braking and steering. However, Koester’s F250 was one of many that did not have that capability activated when it was shipped. Kamp said a recall had been issued that would have corrected it when the pickup was serviced at a dealership, but that hadn’t happened with Koester’s pickup.

The airbag control module in the K&B Ford F150 did collect its data, Kamp said.

Instead, Kamp said, for the F250’s speed he used global positioning satellite data from the infotainment system. Because GPS locations aren’t precise, Kamp said, the best he could do to determine speed was give a range.

He said Koester’s pickup recorded its GPS position about once a second, so he could track the route Koester took from Wilmoth Highway to Sutton Road to Ridge Highway to Milwaukee Road but also if he slowed or stopped for stop signs or traffic lights. By using software to analyze the GPS data, he could get speed readings but they weren’t necessarily precise. For example, at stop signs he came to before the crash, the reading showed Koester slowed or nearly stopped. When he got to the Ridge Highway and M-50 intersection, the data showed he stopped for the traffic light there.

When Koester got onto Milwaukee Road, he was generally driving 65-70 mph, but reached speeds up to 75-76 mph, Kamp said. He calculated that his average speed to cover the distance to Britton Highway from where he got up to speed after turning from Ridge Highway was 74 mph.

The GPS readings showed Koester was traveling 71 mph at 10:29 a.m. and 4 seconds when his pickup reached the Britton Highway intersection, then slowed to 66, 47.3, 23, 10.1, 6.7 and 0 mph, Kamp said.

Kamp said he did additional momentum calculations to account for the weight of a fuel tank in Koester’s pickup’s bed and of the trailer that the K&B Ford F150 was towing as well as evidence from the scene, such as tire marks and gouges in the pavement. Because he didn’t know the weight of the fuel tank – it separated from the pickup and leaked – he used a range of weights in a spreadsheet with 15,000 calculations to determine the most likely speed that Koester was traveling. He said 51% of those calculations showed he was traveling 61-66 mph at the time of impact with a probable speed of 63.6 mph.

Because of the short distance from the stop sign at Britton Highway, Kamp said it was impossible for Koester to have stopped at the stop sign and then accelerated to the velocity that would have caused the damage in the crash.

Haisha asked about the 56-mph reading that Koester’s pickup sent in an emergency notification following the crash. Kamp said that reading was unreliable because Ford would not reveal how it was calculated. He said if the reading was a change in velocity, it would be reliable in a crash with a fixed object like a tree. However, in an intersection crash, he didn’t know if a change in velocity reading showed the change from the speed at impact to when the vehicle stopped or just to a point where the vehicle had slowed.