Physics Can Save Your life

Driver thanks man who hit him on purpose

“We realized he wasn’t slowing down, and if he hit someone at full speed, it would’ve been a very bad scene,” Innes said. The intersection with Southwest Grady Way was a few hundred yards away. “He could’ve very easily unknowingly taken out a whole row of traffic.”

Instinctively, Innes applied his 25 years of experience at Boeing, where he is a manager for the F22 fighter-jet program.

“The best-case scenario is I need to match his speed, get in front of him and let him hit me,” Innes remembers thinking.

Pace’s pickup hit the minivan, and Innes held onto the brakes to halt both vehicles. When they stopped, he knocked on the pickup’s window to alert Pace, who was by then semiconscious, and got him to unlock the door.