Slashdot Mirror
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."
I'm sure that the insurance guys will love this explanation!
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
I'm still wondering why he didn't tap the "X" button to make a bigger explosion. He could have easily popped his car into the oncoming traffic and get like a 100x chain reaction bonus.
Kudos to everyone involved in the story.
A rarity. Thanks.
All rites reversed 2010
OK... I have a BIG problem with the driver not consulting the passengers while claiming "there was no time to take a vote". That is EXACTLY how dictatorships and police states are formed. He should have handed out paper ballots ("crash" or "don't crash") and then used the minivan's "On Star" service as electioneers to authorize, count and declare the vote. Then and only then should he have been allowed to do this. Hitler didn't do it either and look how that turned out. (Godwin!)
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?
I wanted to hear how he used a F22 fighter-jet to stop a truck. But he used a minivan. Boooriiinng.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
He's a hero and deserves praise, no doubt about it. But I think there's still room to discuss whether what he did was fair to the passengers in his car, whose safety was obviously put at risk. Story says they were his adult children. My children are young. I would not have put them in that sort of danger. (Putting aside the fact that I doubt I would have had the presence of mind to think of doing what he did.)
This is how it looks when it works. Imagine the news story had it not saved the man's life and one of his kids had been killed instead. The guy took a HUGE risk here, which is an intrinsic part of being a hero, but I pity his kids a little. Were it just me in the car, okay, maybe. But with my little ones in tow? Not a chance. I guess that's why I'm not a hero and he is, eh? At any rate, the safety of the nameless citizen won out over the safety of his own, which strikes me as odd.
Can't...see...keyboard...faulty...tear ducts...
Who says 'delta difference'? 'Difference in speed' or 'delta speed' please. This could've been really bad if the truck driver was actually just leaned down to pick up some fritos off the floor.
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.
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 :)
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.
No, it won't. One of the specs for designing brakes is that they have to easily beat the engine at full throttle.
I read this on FARK yesterday and I finally had a tiny bit of hope that maybe, if I'm in trouble, someone will be like me and just attempt to do what should be done. This morning, I go the restroom at work, and see that plastered in front of the urinals and on the backs of stall doors (for your easy reading, of course) are lists of ways you're required to respond to emergencies:
In the case of fire:
Calmly exit the building
For no reason, re-enter the building until given the OK by emergency responders
In the case of a shooting:
Run, hide, and call the police. Don't try to stop the shooter.
In case of violence:
Run, hide, and call the police. Don't try to intervene.
And the lists go on. I'm surrounded by warnings that if a good actions puts yourself at risk, then the action is BAD. And I weep a little...
The article says he matched speeds. With matched speeds, the impact would have been minimal. He did not use the impact to stop the other vehicle, he used his own vehicle's brakes.
Captcha: harmless
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.
Something very much like this happened to me back when I was about 5 or 6 years old.
I was in the car with my siblings and our mother drove to the grocery store. She parked and ran inside for just a few minutes to buy something and my younger brother started playing with the steering wheel, pretending to drive.
This car was a 1962 Chevy Bel Air and the shifter did not have an a key interlock so as he was flailing around he bumped the car into neutral and it started to roll backwards towards a busy street.
Some guy who was getting ready to pull out of the parking lot saw what was happening and drove behind us so that the car t-boned his truck instead of rolling out into the street.
where do you live? and have you ever even driven a car? the first task in engineering a vehicle is to make sure the braking system is stronger than the engine.
$ unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes,fsck,fsck,fsck,umount, sleep
I think they should make this into a movie - here's some snappy dialogue that I have a feeling might achieve a timeless immortality in pop culture
Driver: We don't have time to discuss this in a committee"
Passenger: I am not a committee
I think you should get your brakes checked.
It'll probably just get spun as "Decisive manager shows brilliant leadership by wrecking his car without notifying his passenger."
a car engine will easily overpower its breaks
I believe if you really look into it you will find that cars are designed so that (if properly cared for) the stock brakes can overcome the maximum output of the stock engine. This is a fundamental safety feature, which, if ignored, would certainly earn a offending car company a legal black eye. Feel free to give it a try on your way home today, but, if you do, your brakes will no longer be "properly cared for". You will stop though.
I agree completely. Someone without so much as a high school diploma could easily understand the physics in this situation without ever having studied physics. Yeah, he needed caluclus to know what to do. Right.
Damping absorbs vibrations. Dampening is caused by moisture.
Dew not truss your spill chucker, you're spill chucker makes ewe seam like an ill iterate fuel.
BRAKES, dammit!
Free Martian Whores!
What? The engine will not overpower the brakes, barring something esoteric, like Leno's tank engine car. Try it sometime. Go out on a deserted stretch of highway, floor the gar, then stomp on the brakes. You will decelerate.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Your average pickup truck has a bigger engine than your average minivan. The fact that the minivan's brakes can hold back the minivan's engine tells you nothing about how well the minivan can hold back a pickup truck's engine.
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.
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)
The driver of the truck, who had only leaned forward to scratch an itch on his ankle, was a little bit pissed about the whole affair.
Once he realized that he would have to deal with his insurance company, he faked a heart attack to get out of it. It's what we all would have done.
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.
No, it really doesn't. If this is how you are looking to get people into engineering, then you are truly desperate and scraping the bottom of the barrel. If a hairdresser did this, would you expect more people to choose hairdressing as a career?
Furthermore, are the kind of people who get inspired to be engineers by this story the people you would want to trust to engineer critical infrastructure? I would want somebody with a little more depth than that in such a position.
... and then they built the supercollider.
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.
The only currently known foolproof, non-intrusive failsafe for an unconscious driver involves an eye motion tracker. As long as there is saccadic activity, the driver is conscious. No saccades (even with open eyes): we have a daydreamer or a sleeper. Those things weren't exactly cheap just a decade ago, even if one were to optimize them for mass production. These days all you need is a high resolution camera chip coupled into a fast CPU, and use of well-published algorithms. The chip should be, say, 5 megapixels+, but you only refresh a small (VGA or so) sub-window that tracks the head -- say at 100Hz. For initial eye detection, you can scan the chip at a lower overall resolution.
So yes, I agree with you that cars should have alertness detectors, but it's not exactly a walk in the park. There are quite a few companies out there that could pull it off, but there's legislation and other crap that would need to be sorted out first.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
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
RTFA
Without consulting the passengers in his minivan — "there was no time to take a vote" — Innes kicked into engineer mode .
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
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.
In my opinion, his greater responsibility was to the passengers in the vehicle HE is controlling.
Blar.
There was very little risk. Delta-V was small.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Also, whatever trucks these are designed so that they can keep moving while the driver is unconscious - Clearly unsafe.
But I'm not trolling, I'm being honest and serious. The summary was pretty terrible and cars don't have failsafes for an unconscious driver.
Hello, my name is cruise control. Nice to meet you!
I did the same thing, but the other driver wasn't slumped over the steering wheel... they were reading a book. They didn't thank me either.
It isn't about the law, it's about rational thinking. You don't know that by doing nothing the damage would have been bigger and that more would have been hurt. Yet you accept this premise as a fact and that is why your argument breaks down.
Do Nothing:
1) Driver and passengers do not impact any vehicles and get out of the way...no added risk.
2) Possible added risk to those in the intersection.
Try to stop vehicle
1) Driver and passengers are exposed to greater risk from rear impact
2) Possibly lowered but not eliminated risk to those in intersection.
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.
Blar.
That gave me a chuckle, thanks.
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
Dammit, who's cutting onions in here?!
Keep your eyes to the sky.
What if the other driver was drunk or tired? Who knows what he might do if started into alertness by an impact.
Be a hero, but don't take others with you...
Blar.
Come on! Your slippery slope argument does't work. HItler never owned a minivan. (Sure he wanted to, but he was afraid it would make him look gay, so he invaded Poland instead.)
And there’s almost zero risk of injury in a rear-end collision between two vehicles that are going almost exactly the same speed. So whatever that greater responsibility to them is, multiply it by ~0, and whatever the lesser responsibility that he had to the other people was can be multiplied by “high probability of severe injury or death * multiple people”.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
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?
Cynic mode ENGAGE:
The newspapers love to report on things that might positively affect the stock prices of certain companies in people's stock portfolios. Especially ones that might be titled "Seattle Times"
True fact: I once was a finalist in some local paper airplane contest done as an art project />
Newspaper headlines: "Boeing Engineer Wins Paper Airplane Contest" <rolls eyes
Why? I don't see why, given that he had a conscious choice whether to act or not, why his choice should be biased towards his passenger. Sure, the passenger has the right to live but no more than the people on the plane. What this amounts to is several people all in the wrong place at the wrong time. Somebody had to be put at risk, and the choice was the driver's. By choosing to shield one person, the driver was risking the lives of the others. I don't think that, just because the passenger happened to be under the care of the person with control, the person needs to be given preferential treatment at the expense of others.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
"Engineer mode?" Come on folks. Its not like he did the maths on the spot.
So, I'm an EE. Should I have worked out how to jam the guy's ECU to stall his car?
Have gnu, will travel.
... then they would wrestle, with the minivan careening crazily all over the road as they roll around and dangled off the back... pulling themselves up just in time as the pickup truck repeatedly bumped the back of the van, and then having a fistfight on the roof of the minivan, which would then plunge off a giant cliff in slow motion, with the (driver or passenger, whoever's the good guy) grabbing onto a tree on the edge of the cliff and saving himself with one hand while he snatched the unconscious pickup-truck driver to safety with other (as the pickup truck too plunged into the void). Then the pickup-truck driver would wake up and ask woozily what on earth he was doing dangling off this cliff and the hero would answer "just hanging around" (with an austrian accent).
I'd watch it...
We live, as we dream -- alone....
"...the physical principles aren't exactly so esoteric..."
Yeah, you;d think the underlying principals would be intuitive but lets remember how long it took Man to come to realize Newton's & Kepler's laws. The Roman Church kept poor Galileo in prison for demonstrating basic gravity and that was less than 400 years ago.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
They were free to jump out when he told them what he was about to do.
Yeah great... Don't you just love these "My way or the highway" guys? Talk about hitting the road.
When I was a small kid, I was left by myself in the back seat of the car (back then, no one used seatbelts around here, specially in the back seat). For unknown reasons the car lost its brakes and started moving downhill and would exit through the front gate and likely hit the other house across the street. I was able to steer the car so that it crashed the gate instead of going out of our property.
;-)
I don't have clear memories of this as I was small. When my grandmother told this story there was one remarkably funny part.
She told me when people said stuff like: "It was god who turned that wheel and avoided a tragedy!" I promptly replied: "No, it wasn't god, it was me! I did like this!" and did a swinging motion similar to turning the driving wheel.
I wish I remembered this last bit. I could then tell everyone I was an atheist even as a kid.
Hitler never owned a minivan. (Sure he wanted to, but he was afraid it would make him look gay,...
Wasn't he behind the creation of the VW Beelte, though?
I don't know of any personal automobiles that come standard with a dead man's switch. There are on some trains and specialized semi trucks, as well as some consumer recreational equipment (jetskis, treadmills) and power tools (chainsaws, lawnmores). But not on cars or pickup trucks. And very few of these have a dead man's switch with vigilance control.
Whether or not it would make sense and then how to increase the uptake of dead man's switches on automobiles would be a discussion full of flames not appropriate to this story.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
Oh really? Minivans can be pretty damn heavy, especially after you put a few hundred pounds of sports equipment and seven or eight passengers in them.
The Dodge Grand Caravan SE and SXT, and Chrysler Town & Country LX, Touring, and Limited (basically the same vehicles underneath all the extra features) have V6 engines ranging from 170 hp 3.3L up to 251 hp 4.0L (2008, http://www.allpar.com/model/m/2008-minivans.html).
The F150 comes in sizes ranging from a 4.2L 202 hp V6 up to a 5.4L 380 hp V8 (2001, http://www.fordf150.net/specs/engines.php).
A top-end minivan has a bigger engine than a low-end F150, and in any case I’d say the margin of safety should be large enough for the minivan to easily stop the truck in just about all of those cases unless maybe you’re pitting the smallest minivan against the most powerful truck.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
What if the slumped passenger wakes up, all drunk and takes off trying to flee an accident that he caused?
There are other issues here than the simple physics between two bodies.
Blar.
It holds back the minivan's powertrain at full throttle MANY TIMES OVER.
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
lol nice risk analysis you got going there.
"Given what he knew at the time,"
You have no idea what he knew at the time, so don't even try to postulate.
Oh - and never mind that the *facts* of the incident prove you wrong. The "least net harm" was proven to be him stopping the vehicle.
lol
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
I guess we must agree to disagree.
Blar.
Passenger 2: I have a bad feeling about this
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Also the entire scene would take about 5 minutes instead of the ~10 seconds or so they probably were from the light.
That begs the question: if it’s an acceptable (and even noble) compromise to crash a vehicle and cause a few thousand dollars in property damages to save a few lives, why isn’t it similarly an acceptable compromise to kill a few enemy combatants in order to save the lives of your fellow countrymen?
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Actually he did notify his passengers before he did it. It is just stated that he didn't ask their permission, and no one responded to the warning just prior.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
How could an unconscious passenger cause an accident? Passengers generally only cause accidents if they’re talking to the driver or grabbing the steering wheel.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Please never get a job that involves risk analysis or other people's safety.
You're very bad at it.
I'm an electrical engineer working in an office full of mechanical engineers. They told me this during a lunch-room discussion. Apparently I was being had.
So what if they were his children? I don't give my parents the implicit right to risk my life in an attempt to save someone else.
There are MANY other questions. He didn't know why the driver was slumped, perhaps he was asleep or passed out. What if the driver awoke when he impacted? What might he do? Engine power is nearly always enough to over-come braking power. The slumped driver might panic, hit the gas and then both vehicles are pushed into the intersection. What if the bumping caused the driver to fall to the side, turning the wheel and sending his car into pedestrian traffic?
It's not about not getting involved because "might get hurt" it's about the reasonable and most responsible action given known information.
Blar.
I know someone who tried this same 'stunt'. It did not turn out well.
He was driving on the interstate when a vehicle (approaching) behind him started to drift and swerve. He was in his F250 with family and kids, and there were several smaller vehicles ahead and parallel to him. The other vehicle was a work cargo van.
He pulled in front of the van, and attempted to do this same thing. The problem was that the other guy was accelerating, and still swerving. Right before hitting the rear bumper, the van driver swerved over and back, catching the rear end of the truck with the front of the van. The van skit 45 degrees and then rolled, and my friend's pickup "almost" rolled - he was able to control the truck, up until the minivan rolled into him during the sidways slide, and pushed him over.
The van driver died (before the crash, actually - a stroke), and his wife needed facial reconstruction. His truck was totaled. He and his son were mostly OK (he got a nice scar from it and a broken arm). Thankfully, it could've been much worse, since the other vehicles in front of their's were all smaller (with at least two of them with families), and had any of them collided, the families would have certainly been killed.
Things turned out very well for the people in this story. High-speed vehicle collisions are no joking mater - speed and velocity estimation is tricky, and potential energy at those speeds is so very much more.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
If a driver becomes unconscious, then he also becomes a passenger. If he is no longer in control of the vehicle (by virtue of being unconscious), how can you still refer to him as the driver?
Or maybe I'm just high.
If you are driving, the passengers have already placed their lives into your hands.
Of course he's lucky that nothing went horribly wrong, this is the nature of heroism.. you brave the scary and accomplish something awesome.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
I hate the f****** passengers in this f****** car.
There's really not much risk involved. If you keep the speed difference low (drive next to truck, match speeds, pull ahead of it, then let up on the gas very gently), the truck bumps pretty gently into you and you very carefully apply brakes (and transmission, if you have a standard shift) to slow both vehicles down to a stop. Best case: You bring truck to a halt and apply your parking brake to keep you and the truck from moving, then go and try to shut the truck's engine down (assuming the truck is an automatic and hasn't stalled itself out already).
If it's apparent that the truck pushing you is too powerful for you to stop (large engine with cruise control on, for example) then there's little you can do to help. In that case, you accelerate, build up a gap of a few feet, lane-change off in the safest direction, then drive alongside the pickup flashing your lights and blasting your horn like an idiot to let others know that something is wrong here! Pay attention! You might even wake the driver up, though obviously it's assumed you've tried this before taking on the damage attempting to slow him down in the first place.
When you get somewhere dangerous (intersection, curve, whatever), you stop and allow the pickup to continue, hoping the warning you tried to give was enough, and dreading the repair bills to your rear bumper. That's pretty much the worst case assuming you're careful - you tried and it wasn't enough.
The only real risk is making a mistake (slowing down too abruptly and accruing enough damage to your vehicle that you get into trouble, or locking the vehicles together so you can't separate if needed), or not allowing enough time to get back out from in front of the truck if/when you discover you can't bring it to a halt. Obviously, if you're not that confident with your car or if you have a VERY tiny car, then your risk is higher.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
At the same time, he is an engineer. He has some idea of the physics involved and mechanics of the vehicles. He can make a reasonable assessment of how the cars would react in a given situation. Meanwhile, he also knows that the traffic is increasing. He can't possibly know what the condition of the driver is. But it's a reasonable assessment that in such an environment, a vehicle traveling at that speed without control is going to cause a lot of damage and risk more than one life. And he is now in front of that out-of-control vehicle in heavy traffic. To do what you propose, he has to maintain or increase his speed and maneuver through heavy traffic far enough away to ensure the swerving vehicle isn't going to hit him as as he slows down so that the danger passes him. All before coming up on the intersection that's "a few hundred yards away." He's in a risky situation no matter what action he takes. His action wasn't entirely irrational.
That's easy -- B.A. would drive the van next to the unconscious driver's car while Hannibal, Face, or Murdock jumped out the side door onto the car (and the vehicle would start swerving wildly at this point, to add to the sense of danger), busted in a window or the windshield, crawled inside, and brought the car to a stop.
cars don't have failsafes for an unconscious driver.
Hello, my name is cruise control. Nice to meet you!
No, a cruise control isn't a failsafe, it's a fail dangerous. Failsafes are supposed to make a system safe(r) if part of the system (the driver, in this case) fails. Cruise control will happily go on maintaining speed if the driver slumps over in a coma, as long as he doesn't press the brake pedal while doing so.
-- Alastair
Older cars weren't always engineered like that. Back in the late '60s and early '70s disk brakes were almost unheard of, but putting a 400 cubic inch engine with two four barrel carburators was common.
I know my '68 Mustang's engine could have easily overpowered its brakes. The car I have now? No contest; four great big disk brakes.
Free Martian Whores!
FatSean wasn’t trying to call the other driver a passenger in his own vehicle on the account of him being unconscious. He called the unconscious man the “driver” several times in this other post.
You make a fair point, though, to argue that he was basically a passenger. However the thing that differentiated him from simply being a passenger was that he was driving the vehicle up until the point at which he passed out, which makes him responsible for the vehicle. Passing out doesn’t take away his responsibility to be the driver, so it’s fair to continue to call him the driver.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
A more apt analogy would be if he ran over a few pedestrians to stop the guy's car.
Only if property damage vs. damage to human life are so disproportionate that we can’t even compare them.
He did cause collateral damage (to the vehicles). He didn’t kill any pedestrians, no. However, the stakes were much lower than in war... this was at most probably a few hundred thousand dollars and half a dozen or so people. In war, you could be saving millions (of people or dollars, either way).
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Somehow I sense that Steve Jobs was responsible.
The CB App. What's your 20?
means he was thinking like an engineer.
No, that's my point; the physical principles ARE intuitive. You could go through your life without anything more than elementary school math and know what to do. Like I said, what this guy did is amazing; it's incredibly brave, and it required quick thinking and intelligence, and should not be interpreted as anything less based on what I'm saying here. It did not, however, require engineering training. And there are plenty of professions that place equal priority on problem-solving skills.
Intuitively, a tugboat captain would have a much better grasp of what to do than an engineer...
"if it's an acceptable (and even noble) compromise to crash a vehicle and cause a few thousand dollars in property damages to save a few lives, why isn't it similarly an acceptable compromise to kill a few enemy combatants in order to save the lives of your fellow countrymen?"
These aren't similar dilemmas, because only a sociopath equates a few thousand dollars of property damage with human lives. Just how cheap a price do you put on people?
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
Yeah, you;d think the underlying principals would be intuitive but lets remember how long it took Man to come to realize Newton's & Kepler's laws.
At an intuitive level, since the dawn of humanity. Newton and Kepler just wrote it down in the philosophical language of the time. There weren't ancient Roman engineers throwing things in the air screaming "WHY WON'T IT STAY UP IN THE AIR?"
The Roman Church kept poor Galileo in prison for demonstrating basic gravity and that was less than 400 years ago.
Well, I wouldn't characterize geocentrism as being derived from "basic" gravity.
At that point, it comes down to rubber surface.
Unless the follower vehicle has 4WD engaged, my 4 wheels can impart a shitload more stopping force than a Bughatti Veyron at 1,000 horsepower can impart in thrust on the two wheels it's pushing with. His wheels will start to spin, lowering his effective acceleration force to near zero.
Plus, if he starts to overwhelm me, I take my foot off the brakes, floor the gas, break contact, and turn. Done. No drama required. Truck continues on his merry way, I get out of his way and slow back down.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
These aren't similar dilemmas, because only a sociopath equates a few thousand dollars of property damage with human lives. Just how cheap a price do you put on people?
Let me see if I’m understanding you correctly.
In your opinion, a few thousand dollars worth of damage is nothing in comparison to the value of a human life, but only a sociopath would trade one life for another?
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
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?
It isn't about the law, it's about rational thinking. You don't know that by doing nothing the damage would have been bigger and that more would have been hurt. Yet you accept this premise as a fact and that is why your argument breaks down.
Do Nothing: 1) Driver and passengers do not impact any vehicles and get out of the way...no added risk. 2) Possible added risk to those in the intersection.
Try to stop vehicle 1) Driver and passengers are exposed to greater risk from rear impact 2) Possibly lowered but not eliminated risk to those in intersection.
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.
Your premises are faulty. Fail...
The hero had a very real chance of slowing, diverting, stopping the out of control truck.
Such an action presented little risk of serious injury to the occupants of mini van or truck. Seriously. The relative velocities were small at impact. After than point, being able to slow the out of control vehicle reduced the risk of serious injury to the occupants of the out of control vehicle and an unknown number of others. Every mph they were able to scrub off was, at that point, the most important mph to scrub off, from the point of view of reducing energy transmitted to all potential occupants in a collision.
"The coward dies a thousand deaths. The hero dies but one."
I'd rather be the hero.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
"Let me see if I'm understanding you correctly.
In your opinion, a few thousand dollars worth of damage is nothing in comparison to the value of a human life, but only a sociopath would trade one life for another?"
Nice trolling. No, the answer is that a few thousand dollars of property damage will never be equal to the value of a human life, and so the first part of your statement fails.
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
Dew not truss your spill chucker, you're spill chucker makes ewe seam like an ill iterate fuel.
Dew knot truss you're spill chucker, you're spill chucker makes ewe seam like an ill iterate fuel.
There I fixed that for you.
-- QED
Well, there is the slight problem of making sure you can stop *in time*. Even if the brakes on the van are stronger than the truck's engine (which, btw, ensuring that the brakes are stronger than the *van* engine doesn't guarantee they are stronger than the Truck's engine, although I'm guessing that would probably still be true, unless it's a very large truck). While I totally understand the principle the guy used to stop the truck, I would have been at least a little worried that the combined momentum of van + truck might've lead to a situation where I could brake gradually, but not before entering the intersection. (I guess it depends on how far down the road the intersection was - if it was far enough away, you maybe wouldn't worry about it). However, since the truck was going about 40mph, I guess his foot couldn't have been 'flooring' the gas pedal - probably was only part way down, so not as much of a problem with it taking a very long time to brake.
One time I was riding with my brother down a familiar stretch of busy road. All of a sudden we saw a burst of smoke and someone tumbled out of the car in front of us. After dodging her we realized that there was no one driving the car anymore and it was approaching a busy intersection. We looked at each other, nodded, and I proceeded to pull alongside it. He jumped from his door into the car and attempted to regain control, while I sped ahead to get in front of the car with my own, just in case he couldn't. As he regained control of the car I let it run into the back of mine while flashing my lights. He pulled the car over after the intersection and we proceeded to look for the previous occupant. A state trooper then arrived on-scene. Apparently the driver thought her car was going to explode so she jumped from it. She had some cuts and a little road rash but was no worse for wear. The state trooper told my brother he was a hero, to which he nonchalantly responded "I was just doing what was right." Just another day.
Alright, first of all, I’m not trolling. Secondly, you didn’t answer my fucking question, so I guess that makes you the troll. Did you even read my question correctly? When did I say that property damage is equal to the value of a human life?
The following two statements. True or false. You answer. And actually read them this time.
- a few thousand dollars worth of damage is nothing in comparison to the value of a human life
- only a sociopath would trade one life for another
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
More likely he has been watching too much star trek lately and was dying to yell out "brace for impact."
every anarchist is a baffled dictator. Benito_Mussolini
I was not elected as leader of this van to watch Pace suffer and die while we discuss this controlled crash in a committee!
With the first link, the chain is forged.
This'll seem crazy at first, but...
Each life should be valued practically the same.
Letting go of your valuations based on who is near to you (by space or relation) helps you to improve the lives of others around you, and, if everyone around you felt the same way, your well-being and the well-being of those near to you would be far better looked after than if you were competing for resources. Caring for others improves your own lot.
It's counter-intuitive at first.
Imagine some liver cells being selfish. That doesn't help the whole body, which in turn jeopardizes the well-being of the liver cells. Like it or not, we're all in this together. Right now we have pieces of body subverting the health of other pieces.
We're on the cusp of great technological changes. Indeed, we are already experiencing great technological change. Even if it weren't the case, acting in cooperation instead of selfishly would be enough to help each of us achieve a comfortable life. With the advance of technology being what it is, cooperation would have everyone achieving fantastic levels of life satisfaction. It would be immoral and ironically self-defeating not to cooperate.
Well, yes. You have drastically increased the drag without increasing the thrust, so you will decelerate. But will you stop ? Nevertheless, I do agree with your main point, if for no other reason than that the driver of the truck obviously wasn't flooring the accelerator (since he was doing 40 mph, according to TFA). Most car or truck engines are making only a fraction of max HP at 40 mph.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
A Veyron is four wheel drive.
Agreed.
No way B.A would have put his Van in harms way. Otherwise the story would be something different.
"Dat Foo Done Messed up Mah VAN!" *POW*
I love it when a plan comes together.
because both vechicles were about the same weight and horsepower. Now if it was a pinto trying to stop a F550 Dualle things would have been different.
Damn, I misspelled "knot". I also misspelled "yore". See what happens when you trust your spell checker? I messed the whole comment up!
Free Martian Whores!
Probably some cynic who just wants to eat and doesn't care about the pain the poor onions are subjected to.
heck you ever watch ice road trucker they do the same thing. when they are push trucking down hill they will send a truck ahead of the heavy load truck and use it to help slow the truck. they have bumpers meant for this so they don't damage them. it doesn't matter if is 5 mph or 100mph if you only make contact at a few mph its going to be safe. most of the damage from this story was probably from the braking on bumpers net meant to handle the pressure. still good thinking on the guy it coulda been far worse if he let the truck keep running away.
The way I see it, these were his options:
1) do what he actually did. Two possible outcomes:
1a: Everybody lives, no one is seriously injured
1b: His passengers and/or the truck driver and/or other people are injured or killed
2) He does nothing. Two possible outcomes:
2a A merciful god winks and the truck shoots across the intersection, nobody is injured. Later the truck stalls and stops.
2b an horrific accident happens
Given that 2a seems very improbable, option 1 seems like a winner to me. Sure it can go wrong, but the odds are much better than with option two. Now, nobody would hold it against the engineer, it he did nothing. No one, except himself, every morning when he looks into the mirror and every night when he tries to fall asleep.
Now if I only could work the geek reference "Do you know what the definition of a hero is? Someone who gets other people killed." into this post, +5 would be all but certain.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
yea i herd of such story's. i had a smiler experience of a car that crashed in front of my shop and took out 2 of my cars. i owned a car sales shop. the poor man had a hart attack his car rolled into oncoming traffic and hit his car. his car then rolled into my cars finnly stopping it. i called 911 and managed to get his car door open it was pretty damaged. of course i knew not to move him. but he was so messed up he kept trying to keep driving he wasn't even aware his car was destroyed. 911 arrived by then and i left it to them.i later found out the man died from his hart issues. yes i could have sued the family for the damages to my 2 cars but i never did i just wrote em off. the man dieing and all i figured hey where having it bad enough.
...Innes was near the right Pace at the right time.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Not really. It's more like:
Do Nothing:
Try to stop vehicle
The NET risk clearly favored action.
First task? I guess I'm doing it wrong because I'm already getting started on the electrical system and the suspension team won't start on the brakes until a while later.
"There weren't ancient Roman engineers throwing things in the air screaming "WHY WON'T IT STAY UP IN THE AIR?"
No, but there were medieval philosophers & theologians who just knew the earth was the center of the universe, contrary to simple geometric measurements known to the Greeks that might have been made to illustrate the truth. Which is what I was referring to. Or: woosh!
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
"Well, I wouldn't characterize geocentrism as being derived from "basic" gravity."
Now you're splitting hairs. And its "geocentricism".
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
It's getting worse. I've started seeing that incorrect use in books from (apparently) serious publishers. It makes me feel like writing back to them asking if they would like an editor, as they're clearly missing one.
The guy obviously did the right thing, but how could he see the driver was slumped over the wheel after he passed him? Though that is most likely the reporter's fault.
Batman
Everyone needs to be a bit more like him. Doctors, engineers, lawyers and race car driving as well as many more particular careers give you an edge, certain awareness, almost above average, to the point that making split decisions become second nature, and the confidence that comes that is inspiring. We all need to travel more, abroad, soak in different cultures, and learn more languages, we all need multiple career choices of which one should give you access to better mental stimulation of the nervous system, to fully understand the way the mind works under stress, and also be able to master quickness and accuracy in certain conditions. I think if we did that, there would be more stories of people like this guy, that used his knowledge to make quick decision and saving a life, possibly more...
Knowing all your escape exists, and where each fire extinguisher is each time you enter a new building seems extreme, but many navy seals, and black ops agents need to do a 1000 more things like this in the same amount of time to be able to have a situation under control. I am not saying become a navy seal, but merely showing that if the mind can be trained to that level, surely learning where your exists are in every building you enter does not sound that bad in comparison.
I think the problem is that these days, people read a lot more internet than books, and rely far too heavily on their spell checkers.
Also, the educational system sucks.
Free Martian Whores!
Wasn't he behind the creation of the VW Beelte, though?
To some degree. They advertised kind of a layaway system where poor people could save up for the "people's car" (Volkswagen) but then used the money to build other vehicles ...