Over two weeks have passed since Princess Diana died in a fatal car accident in Paris. Stories covering the cause and consequences of her death have been scrutinized by the media from almost every angle imaginable.
We have followed a most extraordinary phenomenon of collective mourning which is without precedence. We have listened to round table discussions concerning legal levels of alcohol and we have learned how those levels differ from one country to another. We have witnessed endless interviews regarding the ethics of that race of photographers known as the paparazzi.
Many of the debates have taken on the form of "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" in a desperate effort to find a scapegoat for such an inexplicable and irreconcilable loss.
If the photographers are the killers, then who put out the contract? Is it the fault of the photographers for taking the pictures? Are the newspapers to blame for printing them and for setting such huge remunerations for candid pictures of the rich and famous? Or does culpability lie with the adulating public who can’t seem to get enough shots of their favorites?
We have heard the testimony of many of the photographers who have pursued Diana for years. They speak of how she fought with them one day and joked with them the next, demonstrating her own sense of the irony of her role as well as theirs. She understood the ambiguity of her need for privacy, her own use of the press as a means to project the image she desired to create for herself as she struggled to break out of the mold that her marriage to the monarchy had imposed on her, and the photographers’ need to make a living and satisfy the public’s unquenchable thirst for her image.
For Diana, for her two boys, and for her friends and admirers around the world, all of this debate about alcohol and photographers is futile. She is gone and finding someone to blame will never bring her back.
One issue that has received little attention until now is the fact that the only survivor of the accident also happens to be the only one who was wearing a seat belt. It may sound like a way to render banal the death of a woman that was as much of myth in life as the legend she became at the moment of her death.
However, if Diana could come back to be with the people who cherished her so dearly, I doubt she would waste her precious words to incriminate any of the hypothetical culprits.
In her almost desperate need to reach out, especially to the most common of us, she would want to say something that could touch everyone.
Not many of us have to worry about how much alcohol or anti-depressants our chauffeurs have downed. Nor do we have to deal with escaping from the flash of photographers. However, we all make the daily decision of whether or not to fasten our seat belts.
Each year traffic accidents kill approximately 41,000 Americans. It is a well known fact that lap and shoulder belts are 40-50% effective in reducing traffic related deaths. Notwithstanding the publicity of the statistics, the national use rate in the United States is still only 68%, never mind in countries where citizens take the letter of the law even less seriously.
As a woman whose mission was to make a difference, if Diana could come back to life again for just one moment to make just one more public statement, I’m sure she’d say: Buckle up, everyone. If not for your own sake, for the sake of the loved ones you could leave behind, for the sake of those who would be lost by the grief of your departure.
September 1997
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