Remembering Princess Diana’s final moments and the failures experts say may have led to her death

29 years ago, on 31 August 1997, the sudden death of Princess Diana shocked the world and left everyone in mourning.

The Princess of Wales was just 36 years old when she lost her life following a car accident in Paris, France.

Diana was travelling through the Place de l'Alma underpass in central Paris in the back of a Mercedes-Benz S280 with Egyptian film producer Dodi Fayed and his bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, who was the sole survivor of the accident, when tragedy struck.

Eyewitness reports say the driver, Henri Paul, lost control of the vehicle at the entrance of the tunnel while trying to avoid the paparazzi, who had ‘swarmed’ Diana and Dodi after their arrival in the country from Sardinia.

Paul was later found to have been intoxicated by alcohol and under the effects of prescription drugs while behind the wheel, with an investigation ruling the car crash an unlawful killing because of both factors.

It's been almost three decades since the tragic death of Princess Diana, aged just 36 (Bettmann/Getty Images)

Now, nearly three decades on, people are still dissecting what took place that day, as her legacy continues to be talked about, well after her life ended.

Here, Tyla looks at the tragedy of 31 August 1997, including what happened leading up to Diana’s death.

She didn’t wear her seatbelt

One of the most heartbreaking details of Diana’s death, that not everyone is aware of, is that ‘one click would have saved her life’.

Dr Richard Shepherd, a forensic pathologist who worked on the royal’s inquest, told Tyla last year: "It was so tragic that if only she had worn a seatbelt, she would have walked out. She may have had a broken rib. She may have had a broken arm, but she would actually have walked out of that crash."

The expert added: "It's a bad crash, admittedly, but it's not that bad and Mercedes are designed to take these bumps. How tragic is that - the one click that would have saved her life?"

To explain, Diana was initially conscious and talking after the crash, before she fell into cardiac arrest.

During surgery, medical staff realised she had suffered a small and rare tear to a pulmonary vein - aside from this, she only suffered just a few broken bones and a small chest injury.

Although it was minuscule, it was tragically ‘in the wrong place,’ and so rare, he’d never seen it before in his career.

Experts have said that if the royal had worn her seatbelt, heartbreakingly, she may have survived (Kent Gavin/Mirrorpix/Getty Images)

She wasn’t put in an ambulance straight away

Another detail that’s been analysed by experts like Dr Shepherd is how the ambulance took almost two hours to get Diana to the hospital after the crash.

The narrator of a new Fox show, Celebrity Crime Scene, said that the crash happened at 12:23 am, and Diana didn’t get to the hospital until 2:06 am.

It reportedly took the ambulance one hour and 45 minutes, even though the hospital was less than a four mile journey away.

As reported by The Express, Investigative Crime Journalist Jakson Buhaj said during the documentary: "The way that the French EMTs handled Diana in the back of that ambulance, why do you have the most famous person in the world in the back of your ambulance - you know she's in cardiac arrest, you know that she’s been in a fatal car crash, and you know her blood pressure is falling.

"There’s a level one trauma center 3.7 miles away, and it takes you an hour and 45 minutes to get her there."

Following the crash, it took almost two hours to get Diana to hospital (JACK GUEZ/Getty Images)

The narrator, meanwhile, claimed that Diana ‘wasn't rushed there’ and the paramedic ‘had taken their time’.

Retired Secret Service agent Rich Staropoli agreed and said there was ‘no sense of urgency’ and the distance ‘should have been covered in a couple of minutes, particularly because the ambulance leaves there with a police escort’.

However, as per The Guardian, the ambulance driver said during Diana’s inquest: "The doctor instructed me to drive slowly because of the condition of the princess.

"We had an escort of several police motorcyclists which enabled us to travel under optimal conditions at 40 or 50km per hour (25-31mph), smoothly, and without having to stop for traffic."

He added: "I should point out that driving slowly is a rule, the sole objective of which is to preserve a casualty where necessary."

Tributes were left at Kensington Palace by the public in the aftermath of Diana's death (Anwar Hussein/Getty Images)

The official investigation and the conspiracy theories

Immediately after Diana’s death, the French authorities began investigating the collision.

Their original inquest found that the accident had been caused by the mix of drugs and alcohol in the driver’s system, with tests finding his blood alcohol level had been over three times the legal limit in France.

However, Dodi’s billionaire father, Mohamed Al Fayed, appealed the findings, suggesting that the paparazzi contributed to the crash and even that the couple were intentionally killed, as per Town & Country.

The claims, as well as the never-ending conspiracy theories, prompted the British Metropolitan Police to begin their own investigation in 2004, releasing their findings in 2006.

The investigation, dubbed Operation Paget, published an 871-page report of findings, which concluded that Diana’s death was an accident and there was no truth to the conspiracies.

However, it did echo that Paul was drunk and driving at an excessive speed and that the seat belts were not used.

John Stevens, the then-Metropolitan Police commissioner who headed the investigation, said at the time: "Our conclusion is that, on the evidence available at this time, there was no conspiracy to murder any of the occupants of the car.

"This was a tragic accident. A crash of this nature is similar to a major crash of an airliner. There is a long chain of events. Take out any link of that chain, and this would not have happened."