In reverse order, the 2001 runners-up and winner:

5th runner-up: Karla, 32, drowned when she fell asleep at the wheel and drove her car into a 30-foot-deep canal. Alarmed by her predicament, she dialed 911 from her cell phone. The operator urged her to roll down her windows or open the door, but she refused. "If I do, all the water is going to come in!" If you are unlucky enough to find yourself trapped in a sinking car, it is essential to roll the windows down immediately so that you can escape from the vehicle. Once the bottom of your door is even slightly submerged, the water pressure makes it almost impossible to open the door until the car is nearly full, which equalizes the pressure. It takes a car up to 10 minutes to sink, depending on how well sealed the vehicle is, but the electrical system fails much sooner as the water penetrates the body and short-circuits the wires. In most cars with automatic windows, the motor that powers the window is located halfway up the car door, so you must act fast if you plan to survive. Karla was a strong swimmer and could have paddled to safety, if only she had managed to escape from her vehicle. When Karla and her 1998 BMW 328 were pulled from the canal, they found the keys to the ignition in her purse, and the left rear window entirely open.

4th runner-up: Electric trains in Glasgow collect power from the overhead cable, and transmit any excess through the rails to a solid copper cable that routes it to a power redistribution box. Copper is a favorite target for thieves. One enterprising fellow with a good knowledge of the electrical system planned to cut the copper cable during the time between trains, when no electricity was travelling through it. His plan might have worked… but for one small flaw. In the pocket of his charred overcoat, police found an out-of-date rail timetable. The train arrived ten minutes before he thought it would, sending hundreds of volts of electricity through the thief's hacksaw and into his body, and putting an untimely end to his career.

3rd runner-up: An Italian man is accused of killing his cousin with a chainsaw in a billion lire ($460,000) insurance scam that went horribly wrong. Justice sources said on Friday the body of 23-year-old Andreas Plack was discovered on Wednesday in a pool of blood in his home town in the far north of Italy.  They said his 29-year old cousin, Christian Kleon, insisted the death was an accident.  The sources said Kleon said that Plack wanted to cash in on a generous insurance policy and had persuaded him to cut open his leg with a chainsaw.  To make it look like a crime, Kleon then fled the scene and threw the chainsaw into a nearby river.  Plack, a part-time bouncer who wanted to become a private detective, was a first aid expert and the pair believed he would be able to stem the bleeding before calling for help.  But the cut was too deep and when he phoned for an ambulance his voice was so distorted by pain operators could not understand where he was.  Kleon is under arrest and faces a murder charge.

2nd runner-up: Based on a bet by the other members of his threesome, Everett Sanchez tried to wash his own "balls" in a ball washer at the local golf course. Proving once again that beer and testosterone are a bad mix, Sanchez managed to straddle the ball washer and dangle his scrotum in the machine.  Much to his dismay, one of his buddies upped the ante by spinning the crank on the machine with Sanchez's scrotum in place, thus wedging them solidly in the mechanism.  Sanchez, who immediately passed his threshold of pain, collapsed and tumbled from his perch. Unfortunately for Sanchez, the height of the ball washer was more than a foot higher off the ground than his testicles are in a normal stance, and the scrotum was the weakest link. Sanchez's scrotum was ripped open during the fall, and one testicle was plucked from him forever and remained in the ball washer, while the other testicle was compressed and flattened as it was pulled between the housing of the washer, and the rotating machinery inside.  To add insult to injury, Sanchez broke a new $300 driver that he had just purchased from the pro shop, and was using to balance himself.  Sanchez was rushed to the hospital for surgery, and the remaining two were asked to leave the course.

1st runner-up: Tribal clashes are common in Northern Ghana, and people often resort to witchcraft with the hope of becoming invulnerable to weapons.   For example, Aleobiga, 23, and fifteen fellow believers who purchased a "magical" potion to render them invincible to bullets.   After smearing the magical lotion over their bodies for two weeks, Aleobiga volunteered to test the spell. He stood in a clearing while his friends raised their weapons, aimed, fired...  You'd think he would have tested the spell on a non-essential body part first. Aleobiga is now roaming the Great Savannah in the sky, and the jujuman who supplied the defective magic was beaten for his failure.

Now for the 2001 Darwin Award winner:

A Japanese woman searched a remote area of America during a quest to find a briefcase containing almost $1 million buried by a fictional character in the cult film Fargo. In the film a villain stops his car in a snowy landscape with no features except a wire fence and fenceposts, where he buries the case. In an apparent attempt to find the supposed money, Takako Konishi, 28, left her home in Tokyo a month ago to travel to North Dakota. There she was reported to police in the small city of Bismarck after she was seen near a rubbish dump. When officers interviewed Miss Konishi she showed them a crude map purporting to show the location where the money was hidden. Lt Nick Sevart, of Bismarck police, said: "We tried to explain to her that it was a fictional movie and there really wasn't any treasure." A hunter later found Miss Konishi's body in woodland near the village of Detroit Lakes, which lies on a road between Fargo and Brainerd. Police, who are awaiting the results of tests to establish the cause of death, said that Miss Konishi had been wearing only light clothing on a night when the temperature dropped to 26F (-3C). They believe Miss Konishi may have been confused by opening credits for the film, which claimed it was based on an incident in 1987 but this was not true.

Congratulations, Takako, you win the 2001 Darwin Award!