Safe Speed Forums

With so much talk (and more coming; a new report on Thursday) about the crash in Paris that killed Princess Diana, it drives me nuts that none of the commentators have bothered to find out anything about the car handling issues involved.

All the reports indicate that the car entered the tunnel at speed. At the entrance to the tunnel is a crest as the road slopes down, and a bend to the left. According to a BBC reconstruction shown last weekend, the driver was also changing lane to the left on the bend and the crest.

The combination of the crest, the speed, the bend and the lane change is simply begging for a skid. The unweighting effect of cresting is very important. It seems highly likely that the driver also lifted off in these risky circumstances and was rewarded with lift-off oversteer. Even without lifting off, he was asking for it. The resultant skid would have been extremely difficult to catch. The pillars in the centre of the tunnel did the rest.

This is an absolutely classic way to stuff up, and we hardly need to look further to understand the development of the crash. Maybe the driver was also drunk which would just act to reduce his judgement and slow his reactions.

The various conspiracy theories are extremely unlikely. Stories about a flash gun fired in the driver's eyes would not make a great deal of difference to crash development. The choice of entry speed was critical and flash guns don't make anyone speed up. Staging a crash is a very bad way to murder anyone because vehicles are too safe. Only around 1 crash in 1,000 ends in a death. (~ 3 million damage-onlys in a year and ~3,000 fatal crashes)

So listen up broadcasters and conspiracy theorists - this crash was a classic driver error.

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Paul Smith
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The car in question was nicknamed the piece of soap by other drivers as it had handling problems, this was brought up in a C4 documentary ages ago.

The conspiracy theories were interesting as the driver of the car was allegedly an MI5 or equivalent informant and the white car that the merc was supposed to have had contact with was last seen heading off towards MI5's headquarters or whatever secret service was in Paris.

Was the changing lanes down to the guy overtaking another vehicle which then changed lanes and nerfed the back of him in classic touring car style?

I certainly don't hold with the flashgun theory. Spectators fire flashguns in the eyes of rally drivers all the time, and it doesn't cause a problem, which I think is because the flashgun isn't located at the point where the driver is looking.

The thing that always gets my goat about the Diana crash is that it is a huge missed opportunity to pass on a clear road safety message about seat belt wearing. Here is a classic example of a crash in which two rear seat passengers were killed, yet a passsenger in the front seat survived, simply because he was wearing his seat belt. What better way could you ever get the message across?

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To follow up JT's point... The only person in the car to survive the accident was the only one wearing a seatbelt. If the driver and rear seat passengers had been belted in as well, that was a surviveable shunt.

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The flashgun theory isnt quite so far fetched when you consider that a speed camera was fitted to the roof of the tunnel at the time of the incident.
It was removed immediately after the crash.
This was actually reported on in a C4 documentary some time ago now.
I actually wrote to the investigation pointing out the speed camera issue.
What a time to get a face full of flash, just as you enter a tunnel.....

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i remember that crash. wasnt the car armour plated? that is going to add some serious weight to it. that certainly wont do the handling any good either especially when it started life as a german tank anyway

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Richie

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