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."

Comments

Cynics unite!

[tacokill]

Ok Slashdot, let's hear the cynical posts! C'mon trolls...bring the best you have.

If you can find something cynical here, then I truly pity you.

I wonder what his passengers thought.

[FatSean]

You don't have the right to put your passengers at risk IMO. He's lucky nothing seriously happened or he'd be looking at jail time and rightly so.

Re:What about the passengers?

[FatSean]

He forgot to take into account what might happen if the other driver awoke, startled, and perhaps mashed the gas and pushed his minivan into the intersection. He had no way to know why the driver was not controlling the vehicle.

It was irresponsible WRT his passengers.

Re:Oh, snap!

[Twinbee]

I wouldn't call it amazingly good, nor selfless. Most would trade off a bit of car damage with a life. The decision isn't rocket science. Yeah, some common sense was used, but I'm sure you would've done the same thing had you had the 'luck' to be in such a cool and strange situation.