Yes, they created conditions that might have made it possible for a lousy driver to wreck a car, but, no, they did not do anything inherently dangerous. A driver--ANY driver--is expected to be able to handle gently decelerating cars on the highway. They should also be able to pay attention despite big billboards, confusing traffic signs, and attractive people gallivanting on the sidewalks.

The average traffic jam is much more likely to cause an accident, but it typically doesn't and, when it does, we blame the driver that rear ends someone, not the masses of people who have actually stopped on the highway, often NOT gently.

Even you, the busybody who called the cops because you read an article, said "What was the plan if the trucker approaching at 70mph hadn't seen the Jeep stalled early..." which implies that the trucker would have been following too closely or not paying attention (or both).

It's worth pointing out that the driver was aware of the situation and they didn't do anything dramatic like lock the brakes or throw the car in reverse. They chose a gentle deceleration in a stretch of road that had no shoulder to make it feel dangerous, but, on the spectrum of hazards that most drivers face every time they take the car out of the garage, this is pretty tame.

The fact is, had something happened, it wouldn't have been the disabled car that was at fault.

I think the researchers are in the clear, and for you to have read the article and been bothered enough to call the cops (and post the number for, presumably, the convenience of other hyper-sensitive folk who might otherwise just go back to staring at the neighbor kids from their bedroom window with their phones in their hands and 911 on their speed dial) is nuts.

I suppose you could counter that the abhorrent practice of intentionally wasting resources to ensure that subsequent budgets don't shrink will tend to prevent the torturers from getting the additional funds you free up with your advanced tax or road planning software, but there remains a good chance you'd free up resources for something within the department that would cause someone to be worse off than they were before. The only winning move is not to play. (OK, that was an opinion on the gov't)

More than that though, I think it'd be neat if this group hooked up with giv2giv.org and each day/dollar would create a new, well-funded endowment. And maybe give users a way to vote for their favorite reruns or something so there'd be a bit of a feedback loop.

Anyway, congrats to them for a basically good idea. I agree that there are some refinements that would make it a bit more palatable for me personally, but I dig it. I love innovation in this space.

And if government can't figure out how much a person makes or what he's worth, I'm pretty sure that leads to something way less dreamy and awesome than it sounds...because, if not, I think they would've covered such a thing in my public school education.