For your daily dose of awesomeness: meet Duane Innes.
Innes, who lives 25 minutes outside of Seattle in Kent, Washington, is a manager of Boeing’s F-22 fighter-jet program. He’s a 48-year-old husband and father. Oh, and he intentionally crashed his car to save another man’s life.
On July 23, Innes was driving on the highway with his children, en route to a Mariners–Red Sox game. Ahead of his minivan, Innes saw a pickup swerve across a few lanes and smash into the median, continuing on at about 40 miles per hour in the shoulder. He noticed the man in the front seat was slumped over the steering wheel, sleeping.
Most of us would switch over to the right lane and keep driving or make a quick, probably irrational, split-second decision on how to help the man in the truck. Innes, though, measured his decision, calculating some simple physics, which are already making my head hurt:
“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.
So he pulled in front of the pickup, allowed it to rear-end his minivan and brought both vehicles safely to a stop in the pull-off lane.
And that, folks, is why Duane Innes is in charge of high-powered, stealth fighter-jets.
The man in the pickup truck, 80-year-old Bill Pace, survived, and his insurance company picked up the $3,500 tab. Pace fell asleep at the wheel after unknowingly experiencing a minor heart attack two days prior.
@James Patrick You took the words right out of my mouth, I would never do that with my kids in the car. Physics makes us all it’s bitches, I don’t care what you think you know about it.
delta=difference=redundancy
Although it is a viable way to stop a vehicle, I would never, ever, ever try that with my children in the car. Ever.