Heroic Engineer Crashes Own Vehicle To Save a Life 486
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."
Oh, snap! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Oh, snap! (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sure that the insurance guys will love this explanation!
Actually, if you read the article, you'll see that State Farm sent him a thank you letter.
Re:Oh, snap! (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, if you read the article...
Hey, come on now, that's cheating!
Re:Oh, snap! (Score:5, Informative)
The other guy's.
They paid the damages to the engineers car and thanked him.
Re:Oh, snap! (Score:5, Informative)
As has been pointed out elsewhere, he likely saved them a truck-load of money, as well as the life of someone they insure.
So, if the unconscious guy in the runaway truck had created the expected mayhem and crashed into someone, they would have had to pay out that settlement. And, if he died and had life insurance, they'd have to pay that.
I'm pretty sure this was overall a far better result than would have otherwise been expected. I suspect they would have a hard time finding the engineer at fault -- I'm sure some form of good samaritan law would apply as well ... "yes your honour, I did smash up both cars, but I was doing it to save lives". At least, you'd like to hope that the law would be on his side.
Re:Oh, snap! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oh, snap! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6991ZE20101010 [reuters.com]
http://personalmoneystore.com/moneyblog/2010/10/12/google-car-artificial-intelligence/ [personalmoneystore.com]
and elsewhere previously on /.
More likely they are just waiting to be sure 10k will drop to 500 and not rise to 20k....in the Google test the car was fine 99% of time, but "driver" had to take control is some situations to avoid accidents......the only accident they re
Re:Oh, snap! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Oh, snap! (Score:4, Informative)
Since the law is basically written such that you must avoid hitting the cars in front of you (even if the driver of the car in front does something absurdly foolish like slams on the brakes), the insurance company has almost no choice but to attribute the fault in a rear-end collision to the driver of the vehicle in back.
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I hadn’t considered that possibility, but I went ahead and looked it up.
Washington (where this occurred) is an add-on state. This means that you must get liability coverage, but you can also “add-on” coverage for your own vehicle if you cause an accident.
Fault is determined and the insurance company of the person who caused the accident must pay to repair the damages caused by his accident (liability coverage), however they won’t cover the damage to his own vehicle unless he purchase
Re:Oh, snap! (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
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Is State Farm his insurance company, or the other guy's?
Well, State Farm's website says "State Farm® is a mutual company owned by our policyholders." So neither of the two men wholly owns State Farm.
TFA happens to mention that Pace* is a policy holder, and does not mention whether Innes* is also a policyholder. So to answer your question, Pace partially owns State Farm, and in some sense, it is "his insurance company", Innes may also be a policyholder, and therefore it may be "his" as well.
(*I'll let you figure out which one is 'the other guy', perhaps by r
Re:Oh, snap! (Score:4, Insightful)
"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?
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I'm sure that the insurance guys will love this explanation!
They did, they even sent Innes a "thank you for being a hero" letter. There really should be more people like him in the world!
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And more insurance companies like that in the world.
Not those that take your money when times are good (take everyone's money when times are really bad ;) ). But have all sorts of little clauses which they use to not pay out.
e.g. http://acleanbreast.wordpress.com/2010/08/26/sht-theres-a-hole-in-my-coverage-make-that-a-manhole/ [wordpress.com]
Or they delay pay-outs.
Re:Oh, snap! (Score:4, Interesting)
State farm does take your money!. They raised my insurance from 162 to 225$ a month, no reason no nothing. Clean driving record, no tickets.. certainly did not grow 10 years in 1 month. The idea that they are nice because they can get publicity from a feel good story is naive at best.
All insurance companies are evil.
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Re:Oh, snap! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh, snap! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oh, snap! (Score:5, Informative)
Actually they did; they paid for damages to his minivan and thanked him for his actions (I (gasp) RTFA). He saved them a lot of money, and probably saved a lot of people from getting injured or killed.
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I'm sure that the insurance guys will love this explanation!
Actually, according to TFA:
State Farm, Pace's insurance company, covered the roughly $3,500 in damage to Innes' car, and a claim representative sent Innes a letter of appreciation this summer.
"We wish to thank you for the actions you took to save Bill's life," State Farm's Clayton Ande wrote. "State Farm and the Pace family consider you to be a hero. I wish there were more people like you in the world."
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According to TFA, the insurance company that thanked him was the company covering the old guy in the truck. Even called him a "hero".
I saw this (Score:4, Insightful)
In a CHiPs episode!
Seriously, well done sir. I love it when I solve problems in real time with engineering.
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It was also used in 'Riding With Death' with semis...but don't think it's a good movie, it's a MST3K episode.
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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
Re:I wonder what his passengers thought. (Score:5, Insightful)
Please never get a job that involves risk analysis or other people's safety.
You're very bad at it.
Re:I wonder what his passengers thought. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Burnout (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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Re:Burnout (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Burnout (Score:4, Insightful)
how else are you going to unlock new cars?
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It is funny. This isn’t real life, it’s Slashdot, and things people post here don’t necessarily have to be taken 100% literally.
Good news (Score:2)
A rarity. Thanks.
RE: Cynics unite! (Score:5, Funny)
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!)
Re: Cynics unite! (Score:4, Funny)
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
Re: Cynics unite! (Score:5, Funny)
... 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...
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Passenger 2: I have a bad feeling about this
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They were free to jump out when he told them what he was about to do.
Well that was disappointing (Score:5, Funny)
I wanted to hear how he used a F22 fighter-jet to stop a truck. But he used a minivan. Boooriiinng.
Re:Well that was disappointing (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well that was disappointing (Score:5, Funny)
Boooooeing.
FTFY.
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Using a F22 fighter-jet to stop a truck is easy... oh you mean without vaporizing it... ah yes that might be more difficult I suppose.
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The F22 still sports a M61A2 20mm cannon even has nearly 5 seconds worth of ammo. That has the potential to leave a vehicle mostly intact.
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That has the potential to leave a vehicle mostly intact
Maybe at the molecular level... <_<
What about the passengers? (Score:2)
Re:What about the passengers? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:What about the passengers? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Once impact occurs, you can start to break
I'm trying real hard to come up with a joke involving braking and breaking... damn, I don't have to! Mod parent "funny"!
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This is how it looks when it works. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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"Adult children" are hardly little ones.
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Spoken like a child, rather than a parent. If my son described doing this stunt, I'd chew his ass for it but good. My dad would do the same to me, I'm sure. Being a parent changes at 18 years old, true, but it never really goes away.
Re:This is how it looks when it works. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is how it looks when it works. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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he was flat-out already, so no problem here.
That was an assumption, and that call is easy to make knowing all the facts. Can you imagine no other scenario which would have complicated things?
Re:This is how it looks when it works. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:This is how it looks when it works. (Score:5, Interesting)
Same-as, as far as I'm concerned. I'd easily kill one hundred to save my own kid. Color me weird, but there it is.
Re:This is how it looks when it works. (Score:5, Interesting)
Same-as, as far as I'm concerned. I'd easily kill one hundred to save my own kid. Color me weird, but there it is.
Its not weird, and most feel the same way.
The question is at what point the line shifts.
Would you kill 1,000 to save your kid? 10,000 people? 1,000,000? 10,000,000 wiping out a species that holds a cure for cancer?
Would it matter if those killed included lots of other children?
Would it make a difference if you saw any/all of those children before?
Would it make a difference if you had to physically kill them yourself?
Not expecting an answer, just asking the question to provoke people to think about the answers. :)
Re:This is how it looks when it works. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, why don't you just go ahead and Godwin it already...
Will you watch in silence while Nazis kill 2 million Jews if they might kill your kids if you speak up?
Wasn't trying to dance around Godwin, just felt it wasn't relevant to the discussion.
Some people have something that is their "This has to be stopped" point. Think of it as the Psychological "Here and No Farther" Trigger.
For some, its "The Baby Seals are being Clubbed", "That guy is about to mow through a crowd with his car", for others its "That guy with a gun is about to shoot my family". Once they hit that point they act, often without consciously knowing they've reached a point (heck, the truth is mos
Re:This is how it looks when it works. (Score:5, Interesting)
And this kind of thing is why I've made the argument in the past that having children leads to a significant degradation in morals. You'd rather let some innocent person (someone else's child, parent, and/or spouse BTW) get T-boned at a busy intersection than put your kids at even mild risk (and if you have any confidence in your driving skills at all, mild risk is all we're talking about in this case). It is, to be fair, evolved into our brains to be this way, but it still sickens me a little bit.
Re:This is how it looks when it works. (Score:4, Interesting)
I never thought of it that way ( the degradation in morals) but I think you are absolutely correct. Before I had my son, 10 to 1, I'd be one of those guys berating those "selfish parents". But now that I have him, I'd literally do anything in my power to keep him safe.
Matched speeds (Score:2, Informative)
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
Re:Matched speeds (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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The children! Won't anybody think of the children!
Yeah, no. Don't pull that crap on my kids. I have, and will protect, the right to defend them to the best of my ability. Your ridicule is misplaced, and is likewise in poor taste. I'm not advocating sweeping legislative change in order to keep kids safe from sleeping drivers.
Hope (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
Re:Hope (Score:4, Interesting)
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...
Feel free to ignore the warnings.
Psych studies show that in a crisis, most people are going to stand there like idiots and do nothing anyway, so encouraging them to get the hell out of danger is a good thing (for them, if not the human race in general.)
Very few people are going to attempt something heroic. If that's you, then you should go for it anyway.
Re:Hope (Score:5, Funny)
Calmly exit the building
For no reason, re-enter the building until given the OK by emergency responders
I had to re-read that like 5 times because I thought it meant I SHOULD randomly re-enter the building for the hell of it (without any reason to do so) until the Emergency Responders say it's OK. Then do whatever.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I used to do martial arts. One of the things you learn is that most black belts get their asses kicked in a streetfight.
A big part of this is because most "martial arts" are pretty useless in a real fight, black belt or no. Giving someone false confidence can be pretty dangerous.
Memories (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [google.com]. 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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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
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Sorry a little off topic but...
So I'm over at my new (i'm recently married) brother in-law's house.
His wife's mother mentions that the school is close by, and starts complaining about it. The bus doesn't stop here!, The school expects them to walk a MILE (if that)
Then she starts talking about how she's going to to got PTA meetings and bring the milk cartons with missing kids. About how America was supposed to stop this sort of thing!
I had to bite my tongue. All I could think of was how great it would be if
And then... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Child stories (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Re:Cynics unite! (Score:5, Insightful)
I pity the fool who wastes bandwidth whining about theoretical Slashdot users.
Re:Cynics unite! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Cynics unite! (Score:5, Funny)
It'll probably just get spun as "Decisive manager shows brilliant leadership by wrecking his car without notifying his passenger."
Re:Cynics unite! (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Cynics unite! (Score:5, Insightful)
*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).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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
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Can't...see...keyboard...faulty...tear ducts...
He got lucky. (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re:Pretty amazing when even insurance companies re (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pretty amazing when even insurance companies re (Score:4, Insightful)
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No, it won't. One of the specs for designing brakes is that they have to easily beat the engine at full throttle.
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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.
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I think you should get your brakes checked.
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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.
Re:Lucky (Score:4, Insightful)
Dew not truss your spill chucker, you're spill chucker makes ewe seam like an ill iterate fuel.
BRAKES, dammit!
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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.
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Who says 'delta difference'? 'Difference in speed' or 'delta speed' please.
Yup, that's odd coming from "a manager of Boeing's F22 fighter-jet program". Hmm... did I say manager? ;)
This could've been really bad if the truck driver was actually just leaned down to pick up some fritos off the floor.
Yes, the hero would be a meddlingsome do-gooder. This could've been really bad if the truck driver had really stepped on the gas when he passed out (it was only going at 40 mph); the minivan's brakes would've had a hard time fighting inertia plus the truck's (150 cu-in) engine, which calls for more interesting maneuvers. Perhaps pushing it *lightly* against the barrier or nudging it into a traffic light