What Should I Do When My Car Brakes Fail? - Car Talk

Stumbled upon this and found it worth sharing.

Car brake failure is a terrible thing to experience. I wish you do not experience such, but it will be a good thing to read this in order to know what to do in case of eventuality.

Before we go on, it’s good we know some basic things about the so called car braking system.

Braking system is one of the most essential system in a car. The system is capable of bring you to stall from breath-taking speeds. In simple terms, brakes are devices by means of artificial frictional resistance slowpoke or stop the motion of a machine. The brakes enable the driver to slow down the vehicle in motion or to bring it to stop. Problem arises when you can’t achieve this again because of the brake malfunction.

You are speeding on a freeway and you notice that your car brakes are not functional again. Here are what you can do in such a situation.

Be very much aware that there will be hell of adrenaline rush in you body because of the situation at hand. But you should try as much as you can not to panic; you just have to calm down.

Firstly lift you foot off the accelerator (gas pedal, throttle).
Push the gear lever of the vehicle to N (Neutral). This applies for both manual and automatic transmission.
Keep on hand firmly on the the steering wheel and then the other hand on the hand brake.
Keep the hand brake button depressed and then gradually lift the hand brake (Do not lock the hand brake). Doing this will slow down the vehicle, and the slower the vehicle goes, the more you lift the hand brake. As  you are doing this, steer clear off the road onto the shoulder of the road.
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If your vehicle has a foot brake, you are going to have to lift your feet of the accelerator when you notice the brakes are no longer working.

Push the gear to neutral to disengage the gears and then steer to the shoulder of the road.

When vehicle slows down, press the foot brake in. This is going to bring the car to a hard stop.

When all these things are going on, ensure that you are on seat belt alongside your passengers because the hard stop will definitely cause all in the car to lean forward because of weight transfer.

Non functional brakes are caused by low brake fluids or faulty master master cylinder that controls the vehicle’s braking system.

I hope this helps. You can do well to use the comment box in case you have anything to contribute.