Death By Car.
Without further ado, here are some famous people who died in auto mishaps.
LISA LOPES: The popular singer for the R&B group TLC was killed on 25 April 2002 while vacationing in Honduras. Lopes was at the wheel of a rented red Mitsubishi SUV when the accident happened near the tiny village of Roma, Honduras. According to reports in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Lopes was "trying to pass a car on the highway when a truck approached from the other lane, forcing her to veer the car sharply to the left, striking two trees before flipping several times, ending upside down." Lopes was killed but several other passengers, including her sister, survived.
PRINCESS GRACE: The former Grace Kelly was a successful Hollywood actress before abandoning that career to marry Prince Rainier of Monaco in 1956. 26 years later while driving on a hilly Monaco road she lost control of her car. It veered off the road and rolled down a cliffside, injuring the princess and her daughter Stephanie. Stephanie recovered, but Princess Grace died the next day. It was later determined that the princess probably suffered a minor stroke while driving, causing the accident.
Like Princess Grace, Britain’s PRINCESS DIANA became a favorite with her subjects after marrying into a royal family. Diana and Charles, Prince of Wales, were wed in a much-publicized wedding in 1981. The marriage was rocky, and the couple obtained an equally-publicized divorce in 1996. In August 1997, Diana visited Paris with her new boyfriend, billionaire playboy Dodi Fayed. While speeding to escape paparazzi, the car carrying Diana, Fayed, her bodyguard and a driver crashed in a Paris tunnel, killing all but the bodyguard.
A trailblazer of 20th-century dance, ISADORA DUNCAN also had a reputation for eccentric flair in her wardrobe. In the autumn of 1927 she climbed into her sporty new Bugatti automobile while wearing a long flowing scarf. As the driver put the car in motion, Duncan’s scarf got tangled in the car’s rear wheel and jerked tight, snapping her neck and killing her. According to Clifton Fadiman’s The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, just before the accident Duncan "waved gaily to her friends, crying ‘Adieu, mes amis! Je vais a la gloire!’" (‘Goodbye, my friends! I go to glory!’)
In 1957 ALBERT CAMUS was at the top of his game: his novels The Stranger, The Plague and The Rebel were internationally recognized as great writing and serious thinking, and he became the youngest person ever to win literature’s Nobel Prize. In 1960 he was working on another novel, a semi-autobiography about his young life in Algiers. On January 4, 1960 Camus was riding in a Facel-Vega sports car with publisher Michel Gallimard and Gallimard’s wife and daughter, travelling from Provence to Paris. Outside the village of Petit Villemomble, the car slid off the wet road and hit a tree, breaking Camus’ neck and killing him instantly (Gallimard died a few days later). The incomplete manuscript he was working on, Le Premier Homme (The First Man), was finally published in 1995.
Author MARGARET MITCHELL lived nearly all her life in Atlanta, the setting of a famous scene from her novel Gone With the Wind. On August 11 of 1949 she was crossing an Atlanta street on her way to the theater when she was hit by a speeding cab. She died of her injuries five days later.
Actor JAMES DEAN was a race-car afficianado who actually drove in a few auto races in 1955. He was killed in a 30 September 1955 highway wipeout in his new car, a Porsche Spyder, while travelling to a race in Salinas, California. Dean and a passenger crashed head-on into a second car; the passenger was thrown clear and survived, but Dean died almost immediately. Dean was just 24 years old, and his untimely death helped make him into a pop-culture legend.
Loud, brash comedian SAM KINISON fueled his comedy routines with stories of his full-speed-ahead lifestyle, including tales of driving while drunk. Just prior to his death, Kinison had managed to reign in some of his manic tendencies: he had quit drinking, was newly married and was about to embark on a new phase of his career. His fans and friends say a breakthrough into mainstream success was on the horizon. On the night of 10 April 1992 Kinison and his new bride, Malika, were driving from Los Angeles to a gig in Laughlin, Nevada. Outside of Needles, California a pick-up truck driven by an intoxicated teenager crossed the center lane and hit Kinison’s car head-on. Kinison emerged from the vehicle with what appeared to be minor injuries, but he collapsed and died at the scene before a medical team could arrive. His wife and a passenger of the pick-up truck sustained minor injuries and were hospitalized.
