That is really sad. I've heard similar things where, for example, somebody is working under a car without jackstands and a hydraulic jack experiences a leak, slowly crushing the person underneath. Or a situation where a car is on ramps and starts to back off the ramps, crushing the person underneath.

The article asks "how fast was the crossfire moving?". With a 3.2L engine the Crossfire doesn't need any speed to crush a man. Even at 20 ft lbs torque, one would need to push back with the equivalent of around 240 lbs to stop the Crossfire. Keep in mind that this engine can move a 3000+ lb car without stalling in 2nd gear and 800rpm. From a dead stop it has no problems crushing a 200 lb man to death.

Basic rule: If a car is moving and no-one is behind the wheel, run the heck away until it's stopped!

One question that comes to mind is, "didn't he notice that the car was moving when he got out?" There's two possibilities:

1. Inclined driveway: It's possible that the car was in drive and facing up on an incline with an angle sufficient enough to counter the starting torque of the car except for a small amount. Once in motion, the car may have slowly onto a portion of the driveway which was at a shallower angle causing a significant increase in speed.

2. Parking brake stiction: It's possible that he put the parking brake on and got out of the car with the transmission in drive. It probably seemed safe to him at the time, but if the car was slowly (almost imperceptibly) moving, then once the velocity of the car exceeded the static holding force of the parking brake, then the dynamic friction of the parking brake would have been insufficient to keep the car from moving.