Airbag theory in Diana crash

A prematurely opening airbag may have caused the accident which killed Diana, Princess of Wales, according to a new theory which is under serious consideration by French investigators.

A doctor who studied the injuries suffered by the only survivor, bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones, believes that the airbags in the Mercedes were already part-inflated before the car slammed into a pillar in an underpass in central Paris in August. If so, the bags may have been triggered wrongly by an earlier impact, possibly a glancing collision with a slower car. This would help to explain why the driver, Henri Paul, lost control and crashed at high speed.