Suppose you ’re driving down the freeway one day . As you ’re about to take the exit , you tap on thebrakes– and you do n’t decelerate down . No matter how hard you press , nothing happens . You have no brake ! What are you conk to do ?
When you press on the brake pedal in almost allcarstoday , you ’re push on a piston . That piston pushes on bracken fluid in themaster cylinder , pressurizing the brake fluid . It flow through thin pipes , calledbrake lines , to pistons at each wheel . Those pistons apply press to the pasture brake lodgings , and they squeeze against a disk or a drum to stop the motorcar . If you were to have a ruinous loss of brake fluid or if someone were to cut your brake lines , nothing would go on when you hit the brake pedal point .
The first thing to do if you ever find yourself in the " no brake ! " situation is to try pump the brakes . If your brake transmission line have a small making water ( instead of a cut ) , you may be able to pump enough fluid into the system to get thing under ascendency .
The next thing is to hear the parking brake brake – this is decidedly an pinch ! If someone disregard your bracken lines , he or she was probably impudent enough to cut the cable for the emergency brake brake as well , so have ’s say that you detect that the hand brake recess is out of commission too .
Thinking Strategically
Now you formally have a trouble . The next matter to try is the transmission . you may downshift a gear at a clip and habituate the locomotive engine for braking . Lots of multitude do this with their manual transmission as a affair of habit . It works just as well with anautomatic transmission . Drop to a lower geartrain , hold off for your speed to diminish and then neglect down another gear . If there ’s a grassy median value , you’re able to get onto it to help the mental process . The airfoil of the pasturage and the uneven ground will provide a little resistance to facilitate slow the car .
If you ’re doing all this and it look like you ’re go to run into something before you get the car stopped , then think strategically . Given a alternative between running into something firm – the monolithic concrete post of a bridge circuit – and something that will give way – a chain connectedness fence – choose the object that will give way . If you may scrub off fastness by edging the side of the car against a wall or a safety rail , that ’s a good idea . Or , if you may drive up a rising embankment , that will also facilitate .
In other Bible , if you have prison term to save the car by using something nondestructive like the transmission or an embankment , apply it . If you ca n’t save the car , then save yourself . Do whatever you could to avert injury to yourself by run into something " soft " or scrub off the swiftness . And if that fails , then loosen up and hope yourairbagis in skilful shape !
