A car stalling does not necessarily indicate it is stopped. Stalled can indicate the vehicle is stopped, or it can also indicate the motor has stopped. Airplanes stall, and obviously they are not entirely stopped, it's just an indication that the motor has stopped. It's unclear as to whether the motor actually stopped, but it's not without precedent to use "stall" to indicate no power available for propulsion.
I don't think this discussion has been distorted. It's based on the information they provided. They put a vehicle on a public highway traveling at the faster end of what's legal in the US on public roads, and then removed a large portion of the drivers ability to control the vehicle. It's unclear whether this affected the steering or brakes, which in a modern vehicle would both be power assisted, generally through the vacuum system of the vehicle. The vacuum is provided by the engine, so if the engine was actually off (which is unknown, but I think it's more likely they just forced the car into neutral), then they removed a large portion of his ability to control the car.
The bottom line is that they put a driver in a situation not only unsafe to himself (which they could have gotten consent to), but unsafe for the other drivers on the road. They did not have consent from the other people on the road to do this (indeed, it's not possible they could have), and if what they purport to happen in the article and video did happen, then they endangered those people. I've seen accidents from stopped cars being hit by others. If the highway is busy enough, the initial accident isn't even necessarily the largest damage, but it moves vehicles into even more obstructing positions and causes follow-on accidents.
I don't think this discussion has been distorted. It's based on the information they provided. They put a vehicle on a public highway traveling at the faster end of what's legal in the US on public roads, and then removed a large portion of the drivers ability to control the vehicle. It's unclear whether this affected the steering or brakes, which in a modern vehicle would both be power assisted, generally through the vacuum system of the vehicle. The vacuum is provided by the engine, so if the engine was actually off (which is unknown, but I think it's more likely they just forced the car into neutral), then they removed a large portion of his ability to control the car.
The bottom line is that they put a driver in a situation not only unsafe to himself (which they could have gotten consent to), but unsafe for the other drivers on the road. They did not have consent from the other people on the road to do this (indeed, it's not possible they could have), and if what they purport to happen in the article and video did happen, then they endangered those people. I've seen accidents from stopped cars being hit by others. If the highway is busy enough, the initial accident isn't even necessarily the largest damage, but it moves vehicles into even more obstructing positions and causes follow-on accidents.
https://www.google.com/search?q=stalled+car+accident&tbm=isc...