How To Stop A Car Safely If Brakes Fail: Explained! [Video]

Imagine driving your car at a speed of 80kph on a highway. You are relaxed and having a good day. Suddenly, you realise that you’ve lost your brakes! The car is still travelling at over 85 kph in fifth gear. Even after several attempts, the brakes still fail. How will you stop the car safely? Well, this scenario sounds realistic and scary. Fret not, this article will explain the right way to bring the car to a complete halt safely, if you lose your brakes mid-way.

What To Do If You Lose Your Brakes While Driving

The Golden rule here is to not panic! Presence of mind is critical in planning the salvage and executing it properly. Panicking at this point will only increase your chances of crashing out. Such crashes may lead to injuries or even loss of life, along with serious damage to the vehicle and other property. So, don’t panic!

The situation is indeed tricky. There are, however, strategies to safely recover from it and stop the car without any harm to people or property. A video shared on the YouTube channel Knowledge Kingdom talks about one such plan of action. In it, the host explains the step-by-step procedure to stick to, in the event of a brake failure. He even does a live demonstration of this, using a Toyota Etios Liva.

Before we explain this in detail, it should be noted that the vehicle used in this video has a manual transmission. On automatic cars, especially the older ones, a different strategy needs to be applied, which we will talk about later in this article.

On manual cars, we use a combination of the handbrake and engine braking to stop the vehicle. First, take your foot off the accelerator completely. The vehicle will still be travelling at a high speed. Next, pull the handbrake halfway up.

Do note that it shouldn’t be engaged fully. Keep it halfway so that it bites just as much to bring the overall pace down, without unsettling the vehicle or making it go out of control. A full bite from the handbrake at high speeds can even lock the rear wheels and make the car skid. So, be very careful while doing this.

With the handbrake half-engaged, start downshifting. In this phase, we use engine braking to bring the speed down. As you move into lower gears without any throttle inputs, you will notice the speed dropping drastically. You should do the downshifting in the right order, without skipping any gear in between, for the best results.

The car will soon slow down to less than 10 kph, when you can pull the handbrake all the way up, to bring it to a complete stop! Yes, this takes some practice. If mastered, the entire procedure can be completed in under 10 seconds! This method is said to be so effective that it can bring a car from 60 kph to 0 kph in just six seconds!

As you might have understood by now, this method requires a good stretch of open road. It can be tough to pull this off on a busy highway or on crowded roads. In such cases, the driver should first steer the car away from traffic and then attempt this procedure.

What To Do On An Automatic Car If You Lose Brakes?

Keeping calm is important here as well. Keep both hands on the steering wheel and steer away from traffic. Find a good open stretch. A brake failure (in both manual and automatic cars) can occur due to brake wires getting damaged, master cylinder failure, and several other reasons. In this case, pump the brake pedal continuously to see if there’s any result. Doing so may develop temporary hydraulic pressure in older system, allowing you to stop safely.

If it remains unresponsive or firm, use the transmission to slow the car- much like what we did in the manual model. Here, shift from D to lower gears- S/2/1/ L. To give you a quick example, the previous generation Brezza used to have a 4-speed torque converter with L, 2 and D modes. These may not be found on many modern automatics. They, however, allow you to manually shift using paddle shifters or the gear lever itself. Use these to shift down. Do not accelerate. Apply the parking brake gradually and continuously. Finally, stop the vehicle by engaging the handbrake completely.