Engineer saves man by crashing into him on purpose

Kids if somebody offers you Newtonian mechanics - just say no!

The insurance company could have said "hey you chose to be rear ended". Instead they paid up without quibbling and called him a hero in the process.

Of course, this would not work well if the other vehicle was substantially heavier (best indicated by the number and size of tires). You would have a difficult time stopping a tractor trailer with a minivan, possibly causing your brakes to fail or your tires to melt.

The brakes in the SUV in front are dimensioned for that SUV and I assume those brakes are not worse than the ones in the truck behind it.

Consider some advice from my driver's ed teacher long ago: "Some folks may have 4 wheel drive, but everybody has 4 wheel stop."

So we have two vehicles duking it out high speed (where braking power >> acceleration power already). It's probably no contest. But at worst, it's a high mass minivan with 4 wheels saying "stop" in a friction-with-the-pavement contest with a medium mass pickup with (probably) 2 wheels saying "go".

The minivan should win handily. Even if the pickup has it floored the whole time.

C'mon, seriously? The article is an up-beat account of how things can go right. How under pressure someone made a necessarily quick decision to take action rather than sit on the sidelines and watch as an observer. Do you really think anyone sane-minded individual is going to come away from this article thinking to themselves, "Man, next time I'm on the highway I need to give this a shot"?

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

Yes, it's great that he did it, and that he took fast action to save a life. It really is; it's a great story! But a down-to-earth comment is not worth downmodding over; it is neither wrong nor irrelevant.

Also, the concrete median the truck had bounced off of ends just before Grady Way. It's likely the guy would've either crossed traffic at Grady Way or moved into oncoming traffic. Either way, there's a high likelihood of serious injury or fatality stemming from an out-of-control vehicle moving through that intersection.

Also, please (re-)read the HN guidelines.

So don't point your finger at this guy, if you have a problem with fighter jets then you need to change the country itself. That is through politics and the military. To me he is just an aerospace engineer that works on the F-22, I see no problem with that.

Especially considering the F-22 is barely used and is mostly a weapon to deal with other jets that don't even exist yet. If you are working on biological, nuclear, or chemical weaopns than I'd have problems with it, but something like a missile or a rifle or a tank isn't that ethically bad because we already have plenty of weapons just like them. The advances in technology just allows the military to do things more precisely. If you have a choice between a guided missile to hit a house, or an artillery barrage to level a block, which would you rather have? Engineers enabled the former.

1) it's off topic. It's like if there was a thread about a Marine saving a kid's life at a pool using such-and-such technique and you went off about how Marines are trained to kill and therefore the guy sucks.

2) Even if the thread was about F22 as a weapon, your comment displays remarkable ignorance of what the platform is used for. It's an air superiority fighter; you use it to shoot other fighter aircraft, whose occupants are typically military personnel actively engaged in warfare, not "innocents". And as far as I can tell, it's never been involved in actual combat. So your claim that his work "probably resulted in many deaths of innocent people" is completely off base.

3) I have friends who have worked on this and similar platforms, who are also good people. They all know that their systems are designed to kill, have thought through the ethical and philosophical ramifications of that (as well as the ramifications of deterrence, of Russia or China winning a global war, etc.), and have decided that what they're doing is a good thing. You may not agree with them, but at least have the decency to address them on an adult level instead of with naive platitudes like they're not good because they work on weapons. That's not the sort of statement I expect from someone looking to have a reasoned discussion. (In comparison, my Mennonite friends and military friends have had some very good, mature, respectful conversations about this topic, without making personal attacks like "you're not a good person".)

In summary: your post was off topic, factually incorrect, and moderately trollish. I'd say that is rude and not good for the community.

It's an interesting problem space, and with many challenges.

Yes, Boeing, Northrop Grumman & Lockheed Martin number among our customers, and our software is used in these programs.

So do NASA and various other companies putting things up into space, things orthogonal to defense.

By your logic, because our software makes it simpler and cheaper to manufacture F-22s and F-35s, I am in some small way culpable as well.

It's the use to which a tool is put.

Do you pay taxes to a country involved in warfare? Do you eat meat? Do you drive a gasoline powered vehicle? Etc etc etc.

Note the above are just examples of things some people are opposed to, not necessarily me personally (in fact I do all of those things)