Yes. Impossible? No. The force that your car is capable of exerting on your tires is far less than the engine is capable of producing. You can see this in performance stats, where 100 to 0 braking always takes much less time than 0 to 100 acceleration. We don't generally quote braking power for cars, but given the increasing attention to safety it is much higher now than it has been historically.

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.

I agree. That part confused me a bit. Was Pace's foot on the accelerator when Innes got out of the car to check on him as well?

Consider that most the acceleration you can possibly exert is the friction between your tires and the road. Consider that your brakes are almost always powerful enough to hit that max (and more -- you can induce a skid). Consider that your engine sometimes is powerful enough to hit that max, but it usually isn't, especially at high speed.

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.

Have you ever driven a car with a manual transmission and tried to set off with the handbrake pulled? Brakes can bring a car to standstill even fighting the engine.

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.

I think what may have helped was the fact that at 40mph, the vehicle was likely in 3rd gear or so. After initially slowing it down, the higher gear would mean that the engine would produce less torque and make it easier to slow down.