[enanoretozon]

not to mention "Without consulting the passengers in his minivan — "there was no time to take a vote" — Innes kicked into engineer mode."

more like "Innes kicked into irresponsible mode risking other people's lives to try something he probably saw on a movie"

[points]

Come on. The risk was very low.

  1. Drive infront
  2. Match the speed
  3. Slowly reduce speed so that the car behind knocks
     into your back bumper at a relative speed of like
     1 mph. Maybe you feel a tiny bump.
  4. Apply brakes

Yes it's impressive, but I'd be willing to bet it's not that dangerous at all. The very very worst case scenario is that you don't match the speed very well and get rear ended, which is pretty much the best type of crash you can have.

[viraptor]

Ways this could fail:

- breaks are not even across the wheels, he spins and goes right back into the traffic, guy behind falls over after driving the other way into the barrier

- collision affects one of the front wheels of the car behind, that car turns into the traffic - minivan either separates or gets locked due to collision

- engine in minivan stalls after collision, break assist stop working, simply pressing the pedal is not enough to stop both cars

- due to the shape of cars' front and back, the car in the front gets hit and one of the wheels get locked, suddenly breaks; the car in the back has enough kinetic energy to hit and injure passengers sitting in the back

- ... I could go forever

As in other posts above - I don't want to say it was stupid / bad that he tried... It worked, everyone's fine, it's great. But for me, my family in the car is infinitely more important than potential damage that might be caused by an unknown person in an car that's under no control.

[points]

You still seem to be missing the point that the impact velocity is like <1mph if you do it properly.

If it looks like it's not going to work, you just speed up again...

[mike_organon]

"But for me, my family in the car is infinitely more important than potential damage that might be caused by an unknown person in an car that's under no control."

I'm glad someone remembered this. Saving someone else might be a good thing, but saving your own family is definitely heroic.

[enanoretozon]

It's not the same having a car hit you at 1 mph when you're stationary than when you're both doing 40 mph and the guy behind is unconscious. A number of things can go wrong.

The moment you have other people in your vehicle you're _responsible_ for their lives. Now everyone is cheering because it worked out but it could have easily ended up as a [Retard] tag on Fark.

[adolph]

I think I remember this being done on an episode of CHiPS.

Don't laugh: I learned how to shift w/o a working clutch from an article in Motor Trend and it came in handy one day.

[sp4rki]

Isn't that what governments do every day? They take choices for the well being of the country, without consulting me. Oh the irony.

[shadowfox]

That is kind of non-sequitur

[sp4rki]

It wasn't supposed to be. I was being sarcastic. Guess sarcasm doesn't translate well in the interwebs.

[natep]

I think that saying 'Oh the irony' in a 'sarcastic' comment is far too meta to be understood in almost any context.