Diana's Legacy

There was no international conspiracy. The driver was drunk and speeding. The passengers were not wearing their seat belts. The result was that they died.

It could have happened in your town or mine, in any country in the world. Sadly, it does, every day. Drunk drivers are dangerous. Seat belts save lives. Not wearing one can kill you.

Even if you're a princess.

The long-awaited report on the death of Princess Diana will not satisfy those looking for someone to blame, some big-picture conspiracy, some ending with the drama of the story. Mohammed al-Fayed, the father of Diana's companion that night, Dodi Fayed, and the owner of the famous Harrods department store in London, has summarily rejected it as a cover-up.

But a cover-up of what?

Of human weakness? Of carelessness or foolishness? Of the failure to appreciate that no one is immune from the impact of tons of metal crashing into metal, and that the human body is vulnerable in these circumstances?

Former London police chief Lord John Stevens spent three years investigating the death of Princess Diana and issued an 800-page report of his findings. But the bottom line was not very complicated. Lord Stevens concluded, as is so often the case, that the death of one of the world's most famous women was exactly what it appeared to be: a traffic accident that didn't have to happen, and certainly didn't have to produce death.

Oh, yes, there were the headlines about our own National Security Agency intercepting Diana's communications. Is there anyone of importance whose phone conversations they don't intercept? But there was nothing to connect those communications with the accident that August night nearly 10 years ago.

People can speculate all they want about what's in those files, but the sad truth is that, since virtually everyone Diana ever spoke to found a way to make a buck by repeating what she said, the mystery is likely to be more interesting than the truth. And it doesn't change the facts of physics, or the facts of life.

Her boys have grown into handsome men. But their mother did not get to see that. She got into a car with a drunk driver and did not put on her seat belt. The issue isn't blame. She paid. The issue is whether the rest of us will learn from it. Who hasn't climbed into the car, just that once, and said: Why bother? Especially if you're in the back seat, and someone else is driving, and you're out having a good time. Just this once.

There is no such thing as just this once.

So much about Diana was magical and special. But not everything. Her life was royal; but her death, painfully common. Dr. Katrina Firlik, in her fascinating memoir "Another Day in the Frontal Lobe" about her training as a neurosurgeon, writes of all the nights she was awoken to deal with catastrophic injuries that could have been avoided if the patient had been wearing a seat belt. Air bags, she writes, are just not enough. Accidents don't have to kill — or create challenges for a neurosurgeon in training.

Princess Diana was not pregnant. She was not engaged. She was just a woman in the back seat of a speeding car, with none of the protection a seat belt would have provided. There is a lesson in that for all of us. It may be mundane, but it is no less important because of that.

Merry Christmas. Remember Diana, the beautiful and vibrant princess who didn't have to die, the loving mother who did not get to see her children grow up. Drink responsibly. Drive safely. Buckle up. No one is immune.

To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2006 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.