Princess Diana killed by common police car manoeuvre?

Speeding and drunk driving does not automatically make you crash. A common police car following manoeuvre may better explain the directional deviation and crash killing the princess in August, 1997.

Conspiracy theories claimed by Mohamed Al Fayed may have been falsified in a trial 2008 on the fatality of Lady Di – reported by SvD on Oct.2 & Oct.3 and by DN.se Oct.2.

See also articles 2007
in The Times : Nov.21, Oct.26, Aug.12
in Dagbladet (Norwegian) Nov.13, Nov.7, Oct.16,
in Helsingin Sanomat (Finnish) Oct.3 with crash photos
in Welt Debatte (German) Feb.7
in DN (Swedish) 2007: Aug.31, Aug.31, Aug.30, Aug.21, Jun.13, Jun.6, May28, Jan.8;
2006: Dec.14, Dec.13, Jul.14, May31, Feb.22; 2005: Jul.29
… and in SvD (Swedish) 2007: Sep.1, Aug.31, Jun.6, May28, Mar.2, Jan.9;
2006: Dec.13 (with Fiat comment)

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Nevertheless, it is necessary to clarify in detail how the driver-vehicle dynamics contributed to the pre-crash events. Otherwise, the court must not rule out that some intentional activity has triggered the driver’s loss of control on August 31, 1997.

The driver, Henri Paul, was able to determine the vehicle motion (as well as the front seat passenger, Trevor Reese-Jones, who also reached the controls). But if the documented trajectory is impossible to reproduce in simulations with ordinary driver actions, other explanations should be searched for.

Did the car leave the lane on the inside of the bend?
Then, speeding is an inadequate explanation. If the car was driven too fast for the bend, it should have left the lane on the outside. Some kind of instability may then have been responsible.

A moderate external force at the rear of the Mercedes car may well trigger such spin-outs – for example by a pushing Fiat Uno, mentioned in several media articles.

I experienced that myself in a race where a small (fist-size) deformation on the rear mud-guard from a competitor’s front bumper was enough to yaw my car and roll it over 720 degrees. I passed out with a minor concussion and my car ended up as a complete wreck. See the photo sequence below.

As an independent accident investigator and University Professor I have seen several examples of how people in media and in courts ignore physical evidence from vehicle crashes, thereby missing both murders and preventable accident hazards in the road traffic system. Yesterday’s blog entry elaborated on this in Swedish with comments in English.

It is strange that traffic fatalites are so lightly taken and hastily investigated by the police compared to other types of violent killings, where advanced measurement and analysis methods are applied in the detective work.

References …
in update April 8, 2008:
The Times April 7, Jan 30, Oct 7