http://cache.jalopnik.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/jalopnik.com.png http://jalopnik.com/tag/death http://jalopnik.com/tag/death

A 60-year-old maid in Lokeren, Belgium, was crushed to death yesterday when the folding convertible top on her employer's BMW mysteriously closed on top of her neck. Police believe she was cleaning the car at the time, which offers little solace or explanation as to how this can happen. Good morning world, meet your new phobia. More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5838684&view=rss&microfeed=true

The North African theater was every bit as savage and deadly as its better-known European and Pacific cousins during World War 2, with the added exposure to the Sun and dust storms for good measure. These pictures tell that story. More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5837387&view=rss&microfeed=true

The Ga people of coastal Ghana have been making elaborate fantasy coffins since the 1950s. For your very last car ride, there really is no alternative. More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5668834&view=rss&microfeed=true U.S. highway deaths drop to 60-year low. Thanks, dead people! Also, using the seat belts dead people test. [Bloomberg] More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5634701&view=rss&microfeed=true Jack Pitney, BMW North America Marketing VP, died in an accident today while vacationing. [@HannahElliott] More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5623028&view=rss&microfeed=true

A Lancia Stratos at the 2010 Tour Auto in France. Say hello to Wednesday, Killer B. Thems is some dead, dead bugs. Photo Credit: Christophe Le Tellier [Flickr/FotosJimmy via SaveTheEnzos] More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5576258&view=rss&microfeed=true

Over nine million General Motors pickup trucks built in the '70s and '80s have a tendency to explode in otherwise non-fatal accidents. This is FairWarning.org's detailed look at how an added "feature" made those trucks deadly. —Ed. More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5513303&view=rss&microfeed=true

Tactical driver training focuses on one thing and one thing only: staying alive. This video gives an inside look at how armed forces and security companies save lives behind the wheel. More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5512813&view=rss&microfeed=true

Bengals wide reciever Chris Henry has died from head injuries after falling out of the back of a pickup truck. According to reports, during a "domestic situation" with his fiance, Henry jumped into the bed as she drove off. [Deadspin] More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5428778&view=rss&microfeed=true

Overpopulation and rampant crime has led the Chinese to develop a rolling lethal injection bus complete with a live video feed of the killings. Details inside. More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5151065&view=rss&microfeed=true

An inquest into the death of Welsh gym owner Gerald Mellin has found the businessman decapitated himself in his Aston Martin DB7 after an argument with his estranged wife. According to the court, Mellin tied one end of a rope to a tree, climbed into his DB7 and wrapped the other end around his neck. Mellin then jammed the pedal down on the $173,000 car, driving into a busy main road, forcing other drivers to watch his horrific death. Police found his headless body still in the driving seat and his head on the back seat. But what caused Millen to kill himself with such heinous vehicular methodology? More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=400143&view=rss&microfeed=true

The death of a Japanese Toyota engineer in January 2006 has now been attributed to working too many hours according to an official ruling this past month. The 45-year-old man, lead engineer on the Toyota Camry Hybrid, was reportedly working an average of 80 hours overtime per month during the several months before his death from ischemic heart disease. The official ruling allows his family to collect benefits from his work insurance, and Toyota is saying they will work to improve monitoring of the health of their workers. Let's hope they mean it, because this occurence, known as "karoshi," has steadily increased since the Health Ministry first recognized the phenomenon in 1987. More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=398217&view=rss&microfeed=true

The dirty little secret at Ford is that Mercury's already dead, it's just that nobody can actually say it. Ford's in a tough enough fight on the eastern front without having to deal with a rear-attack in the west from legions of Lincoln-Mercury dealers pissed off they'll be losing half their sales channel. We understand that of course, but it doesn't mean we haven't done our damnedest to try to suss out the reality from every executive we've been able to get in front of. Whether it was at the 2007 Detroit Auto Show with Ford CEO Alan Mulally's "Mercury blands" slip-of-the-tongue or Mark Fields being unable to explain to us what Mercury was beyond "a Ford...that's a little different." Even at the Detroit Auto Show this year, we asked where the Mercury product was. We've been asking Ford for over two years about the status of the automaker's close-to-the-sun brand. We even asked you whether Mercury should survive after the Detroit News reported we should hear a gameplan for Mercury by the fourth quarter of this year. More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=395606&view=rss&microfeed=true

While Murilee and the rest of Team V8olvo musters on with thoughts still on yesterday's tragedy at the 24 Hours of Lemons race at Altamont, we here at the Jalopnik Detroit bureau are lending a helping hand with coverage. We've just received news from the Gulf 39 team on the identity of their teammate behind the wheel of the Volvo 242 Turbo along with a little more detail on the preliminary on-scene investigation by the California Highway Patrol. We'd indicated to the team we only wanted to know the name after they'd had the opportunity to notify family, so although we're assuming that's been done already, we still wanted to make sure to include the name after the fold of this post to make certain it's been taken care of already. With that in mind — the short, but full, e-mail after the jump. More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=389323&view=rss&microfeed=true

We all saw the report from Murilee just under an hour ago, and now we're hearing from numerous sources that the 24 Hours of LeMons race has taken a tragic turn. Our sources tell us the driver of the Volvo 242 Turbo in Gulf Oil colors (pictured above before the race, and below from the Thunderhill LeMons race last year) has died. We're waiting on more as we hear it from team V8olvo as well as others at the Altamont 24 Hours of LeMons. If this news ends up being true, our prayers, thoughts and well-wishes go out to the family, friends and teammates. All we do know for sure is that racing has been halted for the day and will supposedly resume again tomorrow. Although if it is true, that may just be wishful thinking. Updated below the jump — and with new photos below thanks to Mark Pitts.
More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=389296&view=rss&microfeed=true

It was 14 years ago to the day that this world lost Ayrton Senna. More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=386184&view=rss&microfeed=true

The man responsible for a lot of the design trends BMW produced in the 70s and 80s, Claus Luthe, is dead at the age of 75. Luthe is known for the refining the design of the 3, 5 and 7 series BMW as well as designing the 1967 NSU Ro8o. The New York Times did a decent job burying the other reason Luthe was so well known—you know, how he was convicted of murdering his own son in 1990—until the very end of the obituary. More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=378383&view=rss&microfeed=true
More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=280059&view=rss&microfeed=true

Chris Paukert, often simply referred to as "The Exclaimer," hipped us to this bit of oddball morbidity over at Deutschland's der Spiegel. It's a collection of highly-magnified photographs of insects who met their end courtesy of a motor vehicle. Good fodder for the next anti-car PETA campaign too, we suppose. – Davey G. Johnson More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=241255&view=rss&microfeed=true