People still talk about and reflect about the terrible car accident that killed Princess Diana more than 28 years ago. Diana was in Paris with her friend Dodi Fayed, their driver Henri Paul, and bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones at 3:00 a.m. on August 31, 1997. She was only 36 years old at the time. The group was leaving the Ritz Hotel and trying to get away from the paparazzi who were following them across Paris.
The chase ended when the car hit the Pont de l’Alma tunnel. Henri Paul was going too quickly and couldn’t keep the car under control. He was also sure that he had drunk too much to drive safely in France. The car crashed into a concrete pillar in the tunnel. Paul and Fayed both died right away. Diana and Rees-Jones were harmed extremely badly in the accident. Even though emergency workers did everything they could, Diana died from her injuries at the hospital about 4 a.m. that morning. People all throughout the world were horrified by the news, and millions are still hurting.
Even though government investigations revealed that the event was a horrific accident caused by careless drunk driving and pushy photographers, people have been interested in the facts for a long time. There are still questions, and a lot of people who knew Diana well have talked about their memories and regrets throughout the years.
Steve Davies, who used to drive Princess Diana, is one of these people. He said something in an interview that was hard to understand. Davies thought about what he had done in Diana’s life and what may have happened. “I would have put my life on the line for Diana.” He told The Sun, “My job was my life.” He claimed that if he had been driving in Paris that night, he thinks he could have kept her safe. He was proud and sad when he talked. He kept thinking about what may happen if he did things differently.
Davies also told a personal story: it took him years to figure out why he lost his position as Diana’s driver. He said he learned about the phony claims against him while watching the Netflix show The Crown. Reports suggest that journalist Martin Bashir spread false reports that Davies was giving the press information about Diana. This harmed Davies’s reputation and got him fired. Davies remarked, “I went from having the best job ever to having to start over from scratch.” This event reveals how the scandal affected not only the royal family but also everyone around them.
Ken Wharfe, who was Diana’s personal bodyguard from 1987 to 1993, has talked about how he has felt throughout the previous few years. He thought about how hard it was for Diana to make decisions after she broke up with Prince Charles, like firing her official security team from Scotland Yard. Wharfe claimed he encouraged her to get expert protection because he knew she wanted to be free but also knew how dangerous it may be to be so free in front of other people. Diana had to make her own plans because there wasn’t any official security. This choice might have made her more prone to get hurt than she planned.
Wharfe has said several times how hard it was for Diana to keep her public and private lives separate, how much she wanted things to be normal, and how hard it was for her to deal with all the attention she got from people all over the world. She didn’t drop security because she was being careless; she did it because she wanted to get back areas of her life that royal laws had prohibited her from having.
The passing of Princess Diana is one of the most tragic and important events in recent history. She was more than just a royal figure; her kindness, her work for others, and her close ties to the public made her a symbol of compassion and vulnerability in a society when both are hard to find in the spotlight.
People who used to work with her now remember her not only in words, but also in how they feel bad and that they have to do something. The motorist who still thinks he could have made a difference and the security guard who warned of the dangers both feel awful and are thankful for each other.
People may never know exactly what happened that night, but one thing is for sure: Princess Diana’s legacy will live on. People are talking about it in the news and in documentaries, but also in the hearts of the people she wounded and the others who were with her but are too ashamed to say anything.
