DRIVER KILLED AS ELECTRIC CAR ‘IMPLODED’ IN CRASH

TOP scientist, crushed to death while driving her tiny electric car, was on the phone to her husband moments before the crash and was not wearing a seat belt, an inquest heard yesterday.
Judit Nadal, died after her G-Wiz was destroyed in a collision with a Skoda Octavia in a crash that raised safety questions about the £9,995 zero-emission vehicle. She was the first person in Europe to die in one.
Moments before the tragedy Judit’s husband Dr Miguel Nadal had screamed at her to “get off the phone”. He told North London Coroner’s Court: “My wife said with a panic something like ‘I think I have made a mistake’. I think she had moved out at that stage and seen the vehicle bearing down at her.
“I said ‘well get off your phone then and concentrate’.” She was not wearing a seat belt because she thought it might crumple her coat. His wife led groundbreaking work at Imperial College, London. She was hit turning right at traffic lights on the A41 near Golders Green, north London, near where she lived.
Witness Deidre Allen said: “I was shocked at what I was seeing. The car was crumpling, it was imploding.” Dr Nadal, 47, who was born in Budapest, died from her injuries later the same night in October last year. The inquest verdict was accidental death.
In 2007 a crash test for Top Gear Magazine found occupants of the G-Wiz would suffer “life-threatening injuries” in a 40mph collision.
Transport ministers were so worried about its safety they considered banning the vehicle which is classed as a quadricycle and exempt from standard safety-test regulations.