THE Mercedes in which Diana, Princess of Wales, was killed was travelling at half the 120mph that has been widely accepted, a leading British accident investigator has claimed.
All four occupants of the car would have survived if crash barriers had been fitted in the Paris tunnel where the accident happened, according to Professor Murray Mackay, head of the Birmingham Accident Research Centre and Professor of Transport Safety at the University of Birmingham.
Prof Mackay, who studied material from the French police and visited the underpass, tells the Channel 4 programme Crash, to be screened on Tuesday, that it led him to new conclusions about the accident.
The programme includes a computer simulation of the accident in which the Princess was killed with companion Dodi Fayed and driver Henri Paul. Only bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones survived.
The damage “Newspapers have talked of speeds of 120mph but looking at the damage tells a very different story,” says Professor Mackay. “It suggests an impact with the pillar of about 60mph.”
He adds: “This was a severe but a survivable accident and what we now need to consider is why three people died. If the Mercedes had hit the post at 120mph, the whole of the passenger compartment would have been destroyed.”
The Princess had the best chance of survival because she was sitting in the rear right seat which would have suffered the least force when the car hit the pillar and spun.
Prof Mackay says she would have had a “fair chance” of surviving if she had been wearing a seat belt.
And he claims that the three who were killed would almost certainly have survived - either belted or unbelted - if there had been a guard barrier around the columns in the tunnel.
It is one of the few tunnels in Paris with unguarded columns and eight people have died there in the past 15 years.
“The guard rail would have deflected the car along the line of the highway,
there would have been no heavy hit and the forces would have been survivable,”
he says.