Monday September 1 4:02 PM EDT Official: Driver Had "Criminal" Alcohol Level By Alister Doyle PARIS (Reuter) - The driver who crashed Princess Diana's car had an alcohol level far over the legal limit, officials said Monday, and a motorcyclist may have zig-zagged in front seconds before the crash, according to a lawyer. The latest revelations came as prosecutors continued to probe the role of pursuing photographers -- seven of whom have been detained -- in the crash that killed Diana, her companion Dodi Al Fayed and the driver early Sunday. The well-informed daily Le Monde said witnesses, presumably testifying to police, reported that camera-clicking photographers shooed away the first people who tried to come to the aid of those trapped in the car. Police sources said the driver had been driving at "very high speed" but would not confirm a report that the speedometer of the wrecked car was stuck on 122 miles per hour. The speed limit was 30 mph. The Paris prosecutor's office said a blood test on the driver showed "a concentration of alcohol of a criminal nature." A judicial source said it was 1.70 grams of alcohol per liter of blood -- more than double the criminal threshold of 0.8 grams which carries a prison sentence of up to two years under French law. A lower limit of 0.5 grams carries a fine and suspencion of driving license. Police sources said it would take 10 glasses of wine for an average-sized man to reach the level of 1.70 grams. Police said the car, chased by photographers on motorcycles, was traveling at very high speed when the driver apparently lost control and slammed into a concrete post in a tunnel parallel to the River Seine. The question of whether paparazzi photographers played a role in the fatal crash has unleashed fierce criticism of the media around the world and is at the heart of the official investigation of the accident by Paris prosecutors. A statement from the prosecutor's office said investigators were trying to determine whether the driver had been hindered by photographers chasing the car "or by any other circumstances." Bernard Dartevelle, a lawyer for Al Fayed's father Mohamed, said a witness had seen a motorcycle zig-zagging in front of Diana's car seconds before it crashed. "When he entered the tunnel he saw a motorcycle zig-zag in front of the Mercedes in his rear-view mirror," Dartevelle told Reuters. He said the witness had come to the Ritz Hotel and been referred to police. The Ritz Hotel, where Diana and Al Fayed had been dining before the accident, said the driver, Henri Paul, was not a professional driver but the deputy security chief of the hotel, which is owned by the Al Fayed family. But Dartevelle later described him as the hotel's security chief and said he was trained to drive armored limousines. He said Paul had finished his day's work and was recalled from home in the evening to drive the car. The prosecutor said the investigation showed some people appeared not to have given the assistance legally due to victims of a road accident. The first doctor to treat Diana at the scene, Frederic Maillez, said "she was unconscious...moaning and gesturing in every direction." The off-duty doctor, who happened to be driving by, said he lifted her head and helped her breathe with an oxygen mask. The princess, former wife of heir to the British throne Prince Charles, died more than three hours later in a hospital. Maillez said there were about 10 or 15 photographers "snapping away away at the car non-stop though one cannot say they hampered me or my work." But Le Monde said witnesses reported photographers shooed away the first people who came to help victims and told two policemen arriving at the scene "to let them do their job." Pictures of the crashed car and its dying occupants have been offered to magazines. Lawyers for the detained paparazzi were buoyed by the latest disclosures on the driver. "This changes everything. We are now told that (Paul) was driving extremely fast, in a vehicle he did not master, in a state of drunkeness punished by criminal law," said lawyer Gilbert Collard. "He was endangering people's lives." An investigator told the daily Liberation photographers were too far behind the Mercedes-Benz to have caused the crash. "The car which was trying to shake them off was driving too fast, it's as simple as that," he was quoted as saying. The seven photographers prepared for a third night in custody while prosecutors decided whether to press charges ranging from manslaughter to failing to help people in danger. The prosecutor said the testimony of the only survivor, Diana's bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones, would be crucial. But Rees-Jones, who was sitting in the front passenger seat of the black Mercedes with his set belt buckled, was still too ill to talk. Investigators refused to say whether Diana or Al Fayed were wearing seat belts. Police have seized motorcycles, cameras and films, and carried out searches at the headquarters of several unnamed news agencies in search of any pictures of the chase and the crash. Hundreds of admirers of Diana continued placing flowers at the site of the accident Monday and filed into the British embassy to write their tributes in a book of condolences.