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Comment by sdoering | Hacker News Reader

I remember a story in Germany the other way around were a Tesla driver detected a car on the highway with an unconcious driver. He set himself in front of the other car, braked and stopped slowly until both cars came to a halt. Both insurances did not want to pay for the damage (voluntarily induced damage and such crap) and Tesla paid the bill for the Tesla driver's repair. [1]

[1 German]: https://www.waz-online.de/Nachrichten/Panorama/Tesla-ueberni...

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Happened on the Golden Gate Bridge in 2007. No Teslas involved, naturally, but people sometimes do honorable things to stop an otherwise runaway vehicle.

> Beatty took bold and immediate action. He drove his Ford F-350 Super Duty utility truck in front of the Jeep and allowed it to essentially crash into the back of his vehicle so it would latch on, according to bridge officials. He then "slowly and safely" guided the Jeep across the bridge's southbound lanes and brought it to rest in a safe area, away from the flow of traffic.

edit: This was pre-divider, so a runaway vehicle on the GGB could have made quite a mess by crossing into oncoming traffic.

This sounds nice but you should NOT stop on a highway. This could've killed both + whoever slams into them.

People die all the time even when stopped on the emergency lane (you should really step over the barrier to be safe).

Sometimes it can still be the safest thing to do. It sounds like that was one of those times.

So you suggest doing nothing? Letting the car continue until it leaves the road at the first corner? Potentially causing a head on if there is no dividing barrier?

Tesla driver did the right thing, and is a hero in my books.

Call the police, stay nearby with warning lights perhaps? You could even take the middle option and slow them down to a safe speed.

It's an extraordinary situation, there are no well-proven answers here.

It is however well proven that stopping on a highway kills people, if they had caused a pile-up this would be a very different story.

Its baffling to me that you and others (downvoting) are so convinced that this was a safe action because the outcome was good this time.

It's not a safe action. But it's also not safe to do nothing. I think the driver made the right call (and with the benefit of hindsight it was in this case.)

Doing nothing would have resulted in a high speed accident with certainty of 1. This could have involved a head on or left wreckage on the highway. The driver took a chance on a risky intervention and it paid off.

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