I wasn’t along but my sister took my father’s old 1970 Chrysler New Yorker (BB) down Big Cottonwood Canyonafter a ski trip and overheated the drum brakes riding the brakes all the way down.
She sideswiped enough care to make the insurance agent have nightmares for weeks until she could find a place that wasn’t either the cliff or the dropoff to run off the road into the snow.
I had my damn bicycle brakes fail once coming down a hill. Fortunately, no side traffic was coming through the intersection when I had to blow a red light and there was an uphill on the other side.
First time was in my old first car, driving down the road, mercedes in front of me and the light goes red. Foot on the brake, went straight to the floor and nothing.
Shit.
I wasn’t insured and wasn’t going to run up the back of a merc so I dropped it into 2nd (manual gear shift), pulled on the hand brake and steered toward the footpath. Pulled up about 6 inches from a telephone pole. Rest of the trip home was very careful.
Other time was in dads old ute. I barely fitted in and can’t recall why I was so stupid to drive it as it was falling apart, but went down to the hardware store and discovered when I went to pull in that it had no brakes. FMD. Dropped it into 2nd again and reefed on the hand brake and let the deep gutter stop it.
Also had my clutch fail when I was about to head off for an interstate drive, 260km.
Car was packed, kids were loaded, I wasn’t prepared to unload everything so I did the drive anyway and got it fixed after I arrived. Bastard of a trip, there was just enough grab in the clutch that I could get it up to 100kmh but it needed about a 3km stretch to slowly wind up. Whenever I had to stop at an intersection it took forever to get the speed back up.
Bonus was being able to change gears without needing to use the clutch but I could start the car, put it in 1st gear and it would sit there not moving by the time I got to my destination.
Oh, Christ this happened to me in 1981, when as a stupid 18-year-old I drove a new drive-away Buick through excessively deep water during a thunderstorm near Philadelphia.
I learned to drive in North Dakota during a several-years drought, and didn’t know shit.
When I pushed the brakes and nothing happened, well, I’ve been as scared since, but not often.
In my case it wasn’t the brakes that failed but rather that braking didn’t do anything. I was driving along and a lorry spilled its load of vegetables all over the road in front of me. Braking did nothing - I was gliding along on squashed veg - so I had to hit the accelerator and get the tyres to bite through.
Lost brakes at an intersection, thankfully I was already 95% stopped. I was able to pull off the road and into a Walgreens parking lot without hitting anybody. It was a 20 year old car, and the line just rusted through. I couldn’t afford the $900 brake job and I couldn’t afford not to have a car for the next week and a half–would have lost my job. I just financed a new (used) car instead.
Once on my bicycle, and yes, it was going down a steep hill. I put a lot more wear and tear on my shoe soles than I’d like (and probably a fair bit on my legs, too), but I managed to stop safely.
A couple years ago I went to a mall located about 40 miles from home. It was Christmas time and I was driving my 1997 Jeep Wrangler w/ manual transmission.
The traffic was intense. I was in bumper-to-bumper traffic, and at one point had to slam on my brakes. And then the brake pedal went slowly to the floor.
Did I mention the parking brake did not work very well? (I never use it, and the cable was rusted.)
And… I somehow made it home. When I would have to come to a stop, I downshifted and applied the parking brake.
Was a very stressful and nerve-wracking driving experience.
When I lived in Alberta you weren’t required to get a safety check to license a vehicle and the little box of rust and annoyance I drove had a slow leak in the brake line.
I drove with a 4l container of brake fluid in the back seat, but whenever I got careless and didn’t keep it filled I did a lot of downshifting to stop until I could pull over and refill the reservoir.
This went on for 6 months til my dad visited and fixed them for me.
Not the breaks, per se- but the driveshaft…let me explain…
Junior in High School on the way to a Varsity Quiz meet (NERD)…
As it was explained to me, the u joint came off the back part of the drive shaft so I was dragging it while going about 65 on the freeway in Las Vegas, losing all steering wheel control on a curve…
I quickly threw on the hazards and drifted to the shoulder/whatever the heck it was called. I was driving an early 80’s Buick Skylark back then.
I wonder if I would have jack knifed if the front end would have dropped instead of the back…
Yeah. Never had the brakes fail but the distributor cap blew on my 1990 Toyota Corolla. News flash if you don’t know, when the distributor cap blows, your car just stops. Everything stops. The engine basically shuts off and you have no power steering or anything.
I was going 60 mph on the highway in the middle lane. Thankfully no one was in the right so I was able to wrench my car over to the far right.
Everybody: I love you very much but it’s BRAKES. Breaks are something you take at work.
I’ve had brakes fail twice. Both times they didn’t fail completely.
The first time was many years ago when I was in college. I was driving a 1978 Olds Delta 88 (a big-ass hunk of American steel) and going down hill. There was a teeny-tiny little foreign car in front of me, and the brakes chose that moment to fail. I was certain that I was going to knock that tiny car right out onto the main road. My car managed to stop a few inches short of smashing into the little car, and I don’t think the driver of that car realized how close they had come to getting creamed.
The second time I was driving my Cadillac home from work and the pedal went to the floor. Fortunately I was in a residential neighborhood that I cut through on the way home that has a 25 mph speed limit, and I still had some brakes, so no biggie. I managed to limp the car home, which is about a 45 minute drive, but very few stops along the way. I just gave myself a lot of room between me and the car in front of me.
ETA: Not brakes, but I once had the throttle stick while driving up 270 coming up from the DC beltway. When I pushed in the clutch pedal in the engine revved very high, so I let the clutch out so that I wouldn’t destroy the engine. Once I managed to get over into the right lane I pushed the clutch in, shut the engine off, and coasted to a stop on the side of the road.
