Fast lives, furious deaths: infamous fatal car crashes

Gone too soon. Absolutely speechless. A heartbreaking time. Strength and light. These are how Paul Walker’s costars  in the “The Fast and the Furious” series described the actor, after his death on Saturday afternoon in a horrific car crash in California. The 40-year-old Walker went for a ride with his friend and business partner Roger Rodas in a red Porsche Carrera GT, one of the world’s iconic supercars. Walker’s event intended to raise money for  victims of Supertyphoon “Yolanda” (international name: “Haiyan”). Particularly for an actor so closely identified with a series that glorified cars and fast driving, the death was a shock to car-loving groups worldwide. With the Philippine charity connection, and with “The Fast and the Furious 6” holding its Asian premiere in Manila with some of the stars in attendance, the death  hit hard the Philippine car enthusiast community.

 

We sometimes think of celebrities who died young as candles that burn twice as bright and half as long. Unfortunately, the road of fame is littered with the fatal crashes of famous people who did not live to reach their destination.

 

Diana Spencer

Perhaps the most infamous celebrity car crash of all time is the one that took the life of Diana, Princess of Wales. On Aug. 31, 1997, she and companion Dodi Fayed, son of an Egyptian billionaire, were being chased by paparazzi riding motorbikes in Paris. The driver, Henri Paul, who was acting security manager of the Hotel Ritz Paris, owned by Fayed’s father, lost control of a Mercedes-Benz S-Class at the Pont de l’Alma road tunnel. The crash fatally injured Diana, Fayed and the driver. Fayed’s father, Mohamed Al-Fayed, later publicly claimed that the crash had been planned by MI6 and the Duke of Edinburgh. The final verdict of an inquest in London attributed the accident to the negligent driving of Paul and to the pursuing paparazzi. Millions of people were shocked by the accident and subsequently watched Princess Diana’s funeral. The British royal family was never quite the same after her death.

 

Princess Grace Kelly

Another commoner who became a princess, Academy Award-winning actress Grace Kelly married Rainier III, Prince of Monaco. They had three children: Caroline, Albert and Stephanie.  On  Sept. 13, 1982, she was driving with Stephanie to Monaco from their home on the French side of the border. She suffered a stroke while driving, which caused her to lose control of her Rover P6. The car plunged from the winding road down a mountainside. Although she was pulled alive from the crash scene, Grace suffered serious injuries and died the next day at a Monaco hospital. She was 52 years old.

 

Desmond Llewelyn

Forever recognizable as Q, the quartermaster of MI6 in the James Bond films, Desmond Llewelyn was as essential to the franchise as an Aston Martin. Llewelyn was driving alone from a book signing event on Dec. 19, 1999, when his Renault Megane collided head-on with a Fiat Bravo driven by a 35-year-old man.  His death occurred less than two weeks after the premiere of “The World is Not Enough.”

Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes

One of the members of the hip-hop  trio  TLC, Lisa Lopes was killed while driving in Honduras. Three weeks before her death, a van driven by Lopes’ personal assistant struck and killed a 10-year-old Honduran boy. On April 25, 2002, Lopes herself was driving a rented Mitsubishi Montero Sport. She swerved to avoid a collision with another vehicle, causing her vehicle to roll several times after hitting two trees. Lopes was thrown out of the window, and died of neck injuries and severe head trauma.

 

Clay Regazzoni

If you watched the movie “Rush,” you’ll recall that Niki Lauda’s teammate when he joined the BRM racing team was Swiss driver Clay Regazzoni. Regazzoni also drove for Williams and Ferrari. At the end of his Formula One career, while driving for the Ensign team, Regazzoni experienced brake failure at the end of a 280 kph straight. Subsequently paralyzed from the waist down, he continued to race in rallies and sports car events. On 15 December 2006, Regazzoni was killed when his Chrysler Voyager hit the back of a truck at 100 kph.

 

Mike Hawthorn

Another F1 driver killed in a nonracing accident was Briton Mike Hawthorn.  Hawthorn won the 1958 Formula One World Championship against Stirling Moss. He also won the 1955 24 Hour of Le Mans, after dueling with Juan Manuel Fangio. This was the race in which a Mercedes race car crashed and killed its driver and 83 spectators, with Hawthorn arguably being the instigator of that crash. In 1959, just months after his racing retirement, Hawthorn was driving his highly tuned Jaguar Mk 1 sedan in Guildford, south of London. Hawthorn overtook a Mercedes-Benz 300SL driven by racing team manager Robert Walker. He clipped a traffic bollard and lost control of the car. The Jaguar struck an oncoming truck and then a tree, causing fatal head injuries. Decades later, Walker  admitted that the two men had been racing on the road that day.

 

Jean Bugatti

Jean Bugatti was the son of famed automobile engineer Ettore Bugatti. He was following in his father’s footsteps, being a talented designer himself. In 1932, at the age of 23, he did most of the design for the Type 41 Royale. He penned bodies for such automobiles as the Type 57, regarded as the finest of all touring Bugattis. On  Aug. 11, 1939, he was testing a Type 57 tank-bodied racer which had just won at Le Mans, not far from the factory. The 30-year-old lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a tree while trying to avoid a drunken cyclist, who had gotten onto the track through a hole in the fence.

 

Andrea Pininfarina

Another scion of the automotive arts who was lost to an accident, Andrea Pininfarina hailed from a line of legendary car designers. He was the son of Sergio and the grandson of Battista “Pinin” Farina. On a foggy morning in 2008, Pininfarina was riding a Vespa near the company headquarters outside Turin. A car driven by a 78-year-old man came from a side street and directly in front of Pininfarina, causing the fatal accident.

 

Linda Boreman

You may know her better by her stage name Linda Lovelace. The infamous star of “Deep Throat” was involved in a car accident in 1970. She contracted hepatitis from a blood transfusion after the accident. In 2002, she was involved in another car accident, this time fatal, as it caused extensive internal injuries.

 

Jayne Mansfield

Jayne Mansfield was a major sex symbol of the 1950s and early 1960s as one of Hollywood’s original blonde bombshells. In 1967, Mansfield, together with her  lover, was aboard  a Buick Electra, with three of her children in the back seat. As the car headed to New Orleans, the car smashed into the rear of a tractor trailer that had slowed down for a truck which was spraying mosquito fogger. The three adults in the front seat were killed, while the three children in the rear survived with minor injuries. Forced under the truck, the car’s top had been virtually sheared off. Mansfield’s skull had been crushed. After her death, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration required a steel tube called an underride guard on all tractor trailers. This is now known as a Mansfield bar.

 

David Halberstam

Journalist and author David Halberstam chronicled the rise of Nissan and Ford in his landmark book ‘The Reckoning.’ He himself died a traffic accident in California. On his way to a talk at Berkeley, his driver, a graduate student went against the traffic and a red light, causing another vehicle to hit the passenger side, where Halberstam was seated.

 

Jackson Pollock

Influential American painter Jackson Pollock’s signature technique was to splash paint onto a canvas, resulting in distinctive abstract works. In 1956, Pollock crashed his Oldsmobile convertible while driving under the influence of alcohol. One passenger was also killed, while the other, his mistress, survived.

 

George Patton

George Patton was a general in the US Army, best known for his success against the Nazis in Europe and his bombastic oratorical skills. After World War II, in December 1945, he and his chief of staff were on their way to a pheasant hunting trip in Speyer, Germany. While crossing a railroad intersection in Patton’s Cadillac Model 75, he remarked on the waste of war. His driver glanced away from the road at the instant when a GMC truck made a left turn in front of the car. The driver hit the brakes and turned sharply to the left, colliding at a low speed. Unfortunately, the great general had not been able to brace and hit his head on the glass partition on the back seat, causing a compression fracture, a broken neck and a cervical spinal cord injury. He died in his sleep two weeks later from complications due to the accident.

 

James Dean

The “Rebel Without a Cause” actor was already a Hollywood icon when he died in 1955. James Dean was driving his Porsche 550 Spyder with his factory-trained mechanic in the passenger seat. Dean had already competed in several racing events, and he was breaking-in the car for a race that was going to be held in California. While traveling along Route 466, Dean was driving at around 136 kilometers per hour when an oncoming Ford Tudor coupe crossed the center line. Dean tried to steer the Spyder away from a collision, but the two cars crashed almost head on. This sent the lightweight Spyder flying into the air and landing back on its wheels in a gully beside the road. Dean was later pronounced dead on arrival at  a  nearby hospital. An inquest later declared that he was entirely at fault due to reckless speeding.