Pretty much the same thing like in description.

I saw V3S at it's spawn point. The engine was off, no one was inside. It was just brand fresh V3S. I run towards it to enter it. While my character hit it. I instantly received 'You are dead' message. I heard no shots, I was in middle of nowhere and there were only 5 other players in the server. I just died because I run my character into inactive V3S.

Didn't try to reproduce, it just happened. I have used V3S on previous patch (now I have 0.54) and it didn't happen to me before today.