Observing that your brakes have failed while driving can be a terrifying experience. Prepare your self for such a situation by enlightening yourself with some amazing tips to help you stop safe and sound.
Never Panic:
If your “brakes fail”, it’s in your best interest to stay calm & try your level best to get the car off the road as safely as possible. Calmer heads usually overcome the situation.
Keep Applying Brakes:
Excepting that you are behind the wheel of a classic car, your vehicle possibly has a dual “Braking System”, which controls your front and rear brakes individually. Due to this, both halves of your system would have to fail for your car to totally lose all braking power. Keep applying strong pressure to the brake pedal to see If the car slows down.
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Engage Emergency Brake:
If your main braking system doesn’t work then you should go for carefully employing emergency brakes. The emergency brakes are separate from the main braking system, it may help you in stopping your vehicle although stopping might take you longer when doing it this way instead of traditional braking paddle.
Downshift into a lower gear:
Ways of slowing down your car includes keeping your foot off the accelerator so that the engine can help slow down the car. If you have a Manual gearing unit, you should work your way down through the gears to slow your car down. And If you own an automatic transmission, taking your foot off the accelerator will cause your car to shift to lower gears as the car slows down.
Get off the Road:
If you are driving on Highway and face brake failure than your first priority should be moving your card towards the right lane safely. Then make your way towards the slow lane, to avoid hitting by the traffic behind you and turn on your “Hazard lights” when you get there.
Don’t panic you have lost your brakes, your steering capability is still there, Now try to minimize your vehicle’s speed as much as possible. Then look for a side road especially if it goes uphill.
Apply Hand Brake:
Now if you’ve managed to lower your speed and your car is moving with the speed of 15 mins per Hour, applying handbrakes will bring you stop your vehicle quickly. As we know that handbrakes usually work on the rear wheels only, thus it does increase the risk you could lose your control and “spin-out”.
Turning Air Conditioning On:
AC (Air Conditioning) creates a drag on the engine. Then employ coldest temperature and maximum fan speed.
Kerb and Verges:
Driving gently against the Kerb will help you slow your car down, although it will damage tires but NO doubt! It’s really worth it. Try to maintain linear motion weaving side to side will increase your risk of losing control, even though it will result in more resistance to the car.
Do not turn off the ignition:
Never turn off the ignition, many people do this thinking the car will slow down. However, turning the key will also close the power steering, “making a bad situation worse”.
Turn the wheel:
Turning the wheel expecting that you have a wide enough berth. It creates road friction, which causes a drastic reduction in the speed of the vehicle.
Signal for help:
You will need some assistance once your vehicle is safely off the road. Make the traffic in your surroundings aware of your situation by raising your “hood” and turning on your hazard lights.
We hope you never face such a situation ever in your life but God forbid if your vehicle brakes suddenly stop working you don’t have to worry, some careful considerations and common sense plus calm nerves can help avoid disaster.
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