Woman suffocates to death after getting stuck in Fiat 500’s electric window

The 60-year-old woman died after a freak accident resulted in her neck being crushed in the window of her Fiat 500 – she had been trying to stop her car rolling away after leaving the handbrake off

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A woman has died in a freak accident after getting stuck in her car’s electric window.

Bernadette Delmotte, 60, was killed while attempting to stop her car^[1] rolling away after leaving the handbrake off. Reports in her hometown of Bissy-sur-Fley, France^[2], said she stuck her head through the window of the Fiat 500^[3] to reach the handbrake, but is believed to have accidently applied pressure to the controls, crushing her neck between the window and the body of the car.

Her family and friends, whose suspicions were first raised when she failed to turn up to a meal on the day of the incident, June 13, said they initially feared she could have been attacked by a “madman” trying to steal her car.

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But investigations uncovered that her death had been the result of a horrific accident involving vehicle’s window. Her brother François told Franceinfo: “At first, even the police were confused.

“They were really asking, ‘What the hell happened?’ I didn’t understand it either. When they called me to tell me, I was confused, in denial.

“Overwhelmed with emotion, I told myself all sorts of things – that someone had attacked her, that she had died by suicide – and then, little by little, I understood.”

And her close friend Béatrice told France 3: “It seems the handbrake hadn’t been applied. The car then began to roll backwards.

“To stop it, Bernadette threw herself through the open window to stop it from going any further. But her hand moved over the window control, and by the time she straightened up, the window stopped on her neck.”

In 2021, a woman in Ukraine^[6] died in a similar freak accident after getting her neck stuck in the window of her standstill BMW car.

The mother-of-two, who had been celebrating her 21st birthday, had been reaching out to her daughter through the half-open window of the front seat when the toddler hit pushed the automatic window button, crushing her throat.

Her husband found her unconscious, and she died eight days later, having suffered asphyxia leading to brain damage.

Many modern cars feature so-called ‘pinch protection’ features designed to prevent injuries from closing windows. These typically use sensors to detect when a window is facing resistance, triggering an automatic anti-pinch mechanism.