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Heroic Engineer Crashes Own Vehicle To Save a Life
scottbomb sends in this feel-good story of an engineer-hero, calling it "one of the coolest stories I've read in a long time." "A manager of Boeing's F22 fighter-jet program, Innes dodged the truck, then looked back to see that the driver was slumped over the wheel. He knew a busy intersection was just ahead, and he had to act fast. Without consulting the passengers in his minivan — 'there was no time to take a vote' — Innes kicked into engineer mode. 'Basic physics: If I could get in front of him and let him hit me, the delta difference in speed would just be a few miles an hour, and we could slow down together,' Innes explained."
In a CHiPs episode!
Seriously, well done sir. I love it when I solve problems in real time with engineering.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It was the insurer of Pace (the unconscious guy), the State Farm, that paid all the costs. It's a simple calculation - the cost of damages was under $4k, while cost of damages if Pace was allowed to continue would probably be at least 10x, if not 100x as much. They saved a lot of money thanks to him, that's why they footed the bill (+ some good publicity).
I pity the fool who wastes bandwidth whining about theoretical Slashdot users.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Guy IS a hero, though the slashdot article comes off as a little weird... "engineer mode"? I mean, (a) this isn't a special brand of engineer-only heroism; and (b) the physical principles aren't exactly so esoteric that you need an engineering background to have figured it out. Can't we just salute his bravery and quick-thinking? Or was the submitter an engineer looking for reflected glory?
That's good. Sometimes the insurance companies react strangely to accidents. I guess it depends on the company, agent, etc. Sometimes they seem to go for short term gains rather than long term gains. For example, State Farm was one of the companies that were denying claims in Mississippi after Katrina. Most often homeowners do not get flood insurance which is a separate policy. State Farm's basis of denial were that the homes in Mississippi were damaged by flood and not the hurricane force winds that hit them, ripped openings, and allowed the rain to come in. If Senator Trent Lott hadn't been one of the homeowners affected, State Farm probably would have fought it for longer than 3 years.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Can't...see...keyboard...faulty...tear ducts...
Thats the point. He knew they would be fine because of his engineers skills. The truck is doing 40, you get in front of it and do 39, your risk is almost no existent. Once impact occurs, you can start to break. Control it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
We have a major problem with a general lack of interest in science, math, and engineering in this country. If a story like this can prominently feature the fact that this guy is an engineer and used principles of physics (regardless of how basic) to solve a serious problem, maybe that will inspire one or two people to get into the field. Every little bit helps.
This is because you aren't a trained engineer. Based on the speeds overall speeds, and speeds differences, the risk was almost non existent. It literally would have had a freak incident to even cause a crash. It wasn't like he got in front of a car travelling 60 MPH and just locked up his breaks.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
More likely the submitter saw one too many previous articles where a giant flamewar developed because some random AC didn't think it was a relevant topic for discussion on /. - the engineering angle is probably a realtime logic-solving solution :)
I guess that's why I'm not a hero and he is, eh? At any rate, the safety of the nameless citizens won out over the safety of his own, which strikes me as odd.
Fixed that for you.
Part of the calculation he said went through his head was that the Pickup was approaching a busy intersection and could easily take out of a row of cars.
Still impressive (which is why he's a hero instead of ordinary news), but more than just "one person in trouble". Might have weighed more on his mind.
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According to TFA, he had a heart attack two days earlier and didn't know it. This restricted his circulation to the point that he ended up passing out at the wheel. There doesn't seem to be anything he could have done, except maybe go to the hospital every day just to make sure he hadn't had a heart attack recently.
And if you know your family well enough, you know what they would say. I know my wife would be mad if I wasted time asking her if it was ok. And if my dad took time to ask me I would ball him out for not acting when he needed to. People in the same family tend to think the same way.
We are the Borg...
No, it won't. One of the specs for designing brakes is that they have to easily beat the engine at full throttle.
Hey, he didn't sue the guy for trauma/whiplash - it might seem obvious to us that doing so would be a nasty move, but in this day and age not suing your rescuer is probably worthy of an honourable mention.
Dew not truss your spill chucker, you're spill chucker makes ewe seam like an ill iterate fuel.
BRAKES, dammit!
Free Martian Whores!
I find it funny that people making the jokes about 100x chain reaction bonuses are better at separating video game fiction from reality than the people complaining to them about it. Clearly he was joking.
Speaking as a parent, cut the apron strings. Yeah I get it, you never stop being a parent, but really, you would jump all over an adult child for saving lives, albeit at personal risk? Would you berate them for defusing IEDs for the Army or being a firefighter too? Adults have to set their own priorities and seek their own fulfillment. If their parents can't handle it that generally leads to estrangement.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Well, "engineer mode" is a direct quote from the Seattle Times. In fact, the entire summary is a quote from the actual article. The submitter had nothing to do with the terminology.
And, really:
means he was thinking like an engineer.
It's the article that makes him sound like an engineer super-hero. And, I don't see much reason to detract from him that much.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I think we need a new meme, "Think of the points!", this can be applied to every inappropriate thought regarding real life and video games.
GODDAMMIT! It's not 'breaks' it's 'brakes'! You and all those other posters sound like fucking idiots.
A 'break' is a chance occurrence leading to good or bad luck, or it's a crack or a discontinuity of some sort. It has NOTHING to do with 'brakes', which are the mechanism used to slow a vehicle.
This is a bad as those idiots who say "mute point" instead of "moot point". Mute and moot have totally different meanings, you have to be really stupid to mix them up.
(/rant)
how else are you going to unlock new cars?
Rightly? By not doing anything the damage would have been much bigger and more would have been hurt.
How can you possibly consider that it is right. Just because you are in the legal safety-zone when you idly stand by and let others get hurt does not mean that it is the right thing to do.
Ask a someone with a basic understanding of physics if two cars at a 5MPH relative velocity can collide safely, and they would say yes. But ask that same person what to do about a pickup doing 40MPH with a passed out driver, and they'd say "call 911". You need the problem solving instinct of an engineer to know calling 911 won't help, and then to trust your knowledge of physics well enough to let that pickup hit you. Even if someone did figure out they should stop the pickup themselves, they would likely do so by trying to run it off the road, or slam into it- again it takes an engineering state of mind to come up with an optimal solution that puts no one at harm, all within a few seconds. Now, an engineering degree isn't required, but you need to know enough to be able to think like one*.
*Of course, prior training works too. For example, police should know how to do what this engineer did- I recall reading a police officer did something similar to stop a "runaway Prius" (I'm not looking to start a debate over the cause of that problem).
My webcomic
Get your head around this: His passengers were his children.
However, knowing the physics, the risk to them was minimal. The only question would have been if his brakes could have held the pressure of two vehicles instead of one.
I still salute the guy. He saved a bunch of people, and did what was right. We need more people like him, and less people who want to "not get involved" because they might get hurt.
They were free to jump out when he told them what he was about to do.
A pressed accelerator does not overpower brakes. Well except for people who press the wrong pedal.
And don't forget said pickup is grinding along concrete.
You really think if selective laws of physics stopped applying and he couldn't bring the pickup to stop that he wouldn't be able to floor his own accelerator and pull ahead and to the side?
At the very least it would be a huge PR disaster for them to not pay out. This way they pay out mere peanuts and get lots of favorable press.
Well, it has never been successfully tested.
If you re-enter a burning building, you're one more person that a fireman is going to have to haul out. If you intervene in a shooting, you're one more armed person against whom the SWAT team is going to have to make a shoot/no-shoot decision on.
It's OK to voluntarily put yourself at risk for the sake of others. It's not OK to put the lives of first responders (or in our hypothetical situations here, second responders :) at risk. Their lives count too, and you're asking them to voluntarily put their lives at risk for yours.
Trying to be more heroic than the situation calls for scores minus several million for good judgement without even getting the 10/10 points for style.
Please never get a job that involves risk analysis or other people's safety.
You're very bad at it.
While you'd like to hope that, I doubt this would be the case.
Imagine if somebody invented a computer-driven car. It takes off and everybody is driving them. The annual death rate drops from 10k to year to 500 people per year.
The end result? The car gets banned and the company is sued out of existence for bad engineering. The 10k people who used to die each year were victims of misfortune. The 500 people who die now are victims of the company.
That is why we don't have computer-piloted cars/planes/etc. Our assignment of liability is way off. The first thing I thought of when I read this article was that this guy would going to get the book thrown at him. Sure, he did the right thing, but that isn't what counts in court. Fortunately everybody else seems to be doing the right thing as well, which is a rarity.
One of the first rules of emergency responce is "don't make another victum" if the firefighters have to not only rescue the people who got trapped in the fire, but also all the idiots who ran back in without equipment or training, and passed out on the way their odds of geting everyone out in time are much less.
That's why those posters say "Don't be a hero", it's to make things easier for the actual heroes by keeping the wanabe heroes out of the way.
This happened in the mid 1980s. The roving bands of pedophiles lurking around each an every corner just waiting for any possible opportunity to steal children did not materialize until cable TV became ubiquitous closer to the turn of the century.
Her biggest mistake was not being familiar with the car. She'd never driven a car that would shift out of park without the key in the ignition so would never even imagine that we'd be able to move the car without her.
If I am ever offered the opportunity to trade my life for a million lives, I will look at the situation logically and conclude the highest probablity is that I misunderstood the offer.
For every hero who sacrifices themselves for the greater good, there's a fool who forgot to carry the two.
It's still good to point out when people do good things, even if it ends up being to their advantage anyway.
They could have just as easily taken all those savings, and still gone after the guy for the damage he did do.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
Given what he knew at the time, I feel the path to least net risk and least net harm would be to get out of the way, honking and flashing lights to warn the intersection.
What about the intersection after that? And the intersection after *that*, ad infinitum.
If the driver of the other vehicle was slumped over the wheel, sooner or later, he was going to hit *something*. What the engineer did was logical, rational, and yes, heroic.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Do you have any evidence that this happened, or are you just jumping to conclusions and assuming the worst without anything to back it up?
Check out my world simulator thingy.
"I wouldn't call it amazingly good, "
I would, how many other people do you know capable of quick rational action in a very dire, time-is-of-the-essence emergency?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.