London, Nov 7 : Princess Diana would have been alive today if she had been wearing the seatbelt at the time of the fatal car crash ten years ago, a police expert has told the inquest into her death.

Senior accident investigator Anthony Read said that he could "almost guarantee" that Diana and her boyfriend Dodi Al Fayed would have survived had they been strapped in and travelling at the speed limit when their Mercedes crashed in Paris's Alma tunnel on Aug 31, 1997.

PC Read, a senior collision investigator for the Metropolitan Police, estimated that Diana and Dodi's black Mercedes was travelling between 60 and 70mph, twice the speed limit, when it crashed into the tunnel wall killing the couple and their driver Henri Paul.

The expert testimony came as the jury were shown physical evidence from the crash for the first time. Both British and French police believe that the Mercedes collided with a mystery white Fiat Uno shortly before it crashed.

On Nov 6, debris from the scene, including four bags of shattered plastic from the Mercedes front indicator light and bits of the Fiat Uno it collided with, were passed around the courtroom for the jury to examine.

Tests by British police showed that no one was wearing a seatbelt in the Mercedes at the time of the crash.

When the scrambled Mercedes was examined by a team from Scotland Yard after being shipped to Britain, they found evidence that Diana and Dodi's bodies had been thrown into the back of the front seats by the force of the impact.

"I think we can almost guarantee it would be survivable,” the Daily Mail quoted Read, as saying.

The jury has previously heard that the front of the Mercedes had paint marks on it from the rear bumper of a Fiat Uno.

But Read suggested that it would have been "virtually impossible" for the collision to have been deliberate.

The jury was told that there was no evidence that the Mercedes had a mechanical fault or had been tampered with before the crash.

The disclosure came as the hearing at the High Court in London was told that the paparazzi who pursued the princess on the night of her death will definitely not be pressured to give evidence.

Even with Justice Secretary Jack Straw’s effort to resolve the diplomatic row, French authorities have refused to make the key witnesses testify.

They claim that forcing the photographers to testify could "damage relations between the media, the government and the general public" in France. (ANI)