Crashing a Car to Save a Life

Here’s a good rule of thumb if you’re driving a car: try not to crash into another car. Cars involved in crashes are easily damaged and those repairs can be costly, and that’s the least of one’s concern in such a situation. Car accidents can be deadly — according to the World Health Organization, well over a million people die each year in car crashes. Drive safe and don’t smash into anyone else’s car.

But there’s an exception. Let’s start with a video. (Click here if it doesn’t load.)

If you can’t watch the video where you are, here’s a summary. See the grey hatchback on the side of the road in the thumbnail above? Over the course of the 34-second clip, it keeps going straight, exiting the grass and going on to an on ramp. But the car doesn’t stay on the road for long. It quickly veers to the right, entering the grassy shoulder again and riding along the side rail. As the shoulder wanes, the rail diverts the car onto the highway, where it continues unabated for a few more seconds. But then, it rear ends a whiteish car, causing a bunch of damage and coming to a halt.

At first blush, the video shows a garden-variety car accident. But if you watch the video again and pay attention to the white car (you’ll see it enter the frame in the left lane, at about 2 seconds in), you may notice something weird. The white car passes the reckless driver and, instead of avoiding the person driving erratically, pulls into the merge lane and slows to a near stop, all but guaranteeing that he’ll be crashed into. It’s a weird choice, one that very obviously would result in the accident.

Except that it wasn’t an “accident” at all. The driver, Henry Temmermans from Nunspeet in the Netherlands, wanted this to happen. He was trying to save the other driver’s life. And he succeeded.

Temmermans explained his actions to RTV Nunspeet, a local television broadcaster. On Friday, November 21, 2021, he was finishing up his workday and left early, expecting to take some video calls from home. But on his commute, he saw something was amiss: the car he was passing was moving erratically. As he told the TV station, “What I saw was not good. It was clear that the lady was no longer conscious/ [ . . . ] I didn’t hesitate for a moment. I had to do something.” So he pulled over into her lane, intentionally causing her to crash into his car. She suffered some broken ribs as a result, but the unconscious driver’s vehicle stopped due to the collision, preventing her from incurring any major harm.

Temmermans’ vehicle was undrivable after the accident but another driver — the one who captured the intentional accident on his dash cam — drove him home. (Coincidentally, Temmermans noted, the other driver “turned out to be an old acquaintance from 25 years ago, when we were both young and wild.”) Temmermans’s employer had leased the car on his behalf, and the company said they’d ensure that he didn’t have to pay for the repairs, which ran €6,600 (about $7,500). And, as NOS reported, the mayor of Nunspeet awarded him the “Honorary Medal for Charitable Assistance,” which the publication described as “the oldest and most important Dutch decoration for brave deeds “performed outside of combat.” Well deserved, for sure.

Bonus fact: According to the United States National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, as reported by Autoblog, “women are 73% more likely than men to be seriously injured in a car crash.” One of the big reasons for that are how crash test dummies are designed. As Autoblog notes, until recently, most crash test dummies were modeled after men; “he first female-focused crash tester didn’t arrive until 2011 and its build represented just 5% of women, being 4′11″ and weighing 108 pounds — the rough dimensions of a 12-year-old girl.” It wasn’t until 2022 that a dummy more reflective of a typical woman was developed for testing car safety.

From the Archives: The Special Sound a Mercedes-Benz Makes Before a Crash: A noise that prevents hearing damage? Yep.