Butler County experts weigh in: What do you do if your brakes go out while driving?
It was just another routine trip home to East Butler for 85-year-old Alva Burket, before he reached for his brake pedal and found out that it wouldn’t budge — a situation that many drivers encounter at least once in their lives.
“Everybody in front of me starts slowing down, and now I’ve closed the gap between me and the guy in front of me,” Burket said.
Burket was behind five or six other cars, all of which started slowing down as the lead car started to make a turn.
“I need to hit the brake pretty good,” Burket said. “When I did, the pedal went straight to the floor (and nothing happened.)”
However, he relied on previous experience — and the design of his vehicle — to immediately activate his emergency brake and bring himself to a safe stop, avoiding a collision. Burket said situations like his are not something new drivers usually consider when they test for a driver’s license or shop for a car.
“I’ve never seen anybody get a driver’s license or get a test drive, and have them question, what do you do if you lose your brakes?” Burket said. “And this kind of resonated with me and I kept passing this information to as many people as I could.”
In case your regular brakes fail, your savior may be the emergency brake.
In most passenger vehicles, the emergency brake is a mechanism between the front seats. In some cars, it may be the same mechanism as the handbrake, which is often used to keep the car stationary when parking on a steep hill.
However, not all vehicles are made equal. Some newer vehicles don’t come with a manual emergency brake at all. Many newer vehicles are instead equipped with electronic parking brakes that activate with the press of a button, usually placed on the center console.
Burket noticed the lack of a manual emergency brake lever on new cars when he went shopping for one in 2019, and he asked a salesperson what to do in case of an emergency.
“If you and I go for a test drive and a deer runs front of the guy in front of me, and he slows down real quick and I’ve gotta hit the brake and the pedal goes to the floor, how do we stop?” Burket said he asked the salesperson.
“’I don’t know,’ he says. And I haven’t been able to find anybody that can give me an intelligent answer on that.”
Rick Moore, owner of Rick’s Auto Repair in Butler, was able to speak to “old-school handbrakes,” but he too wondered what the new, electronic parking brakes would do in an emergency.
“With the old-school handbrake, you can push the button and apply it just a little bit,” Moore said. “The new ones with the electric parking brake, I don’t know if that’s feasible.”
Trenton “T.J.” Bowser, marketing director for Diehl Automotive Group, said with newer vehicles equipped with electronic parking brakes, the best course of action in the event of brake failure is to press and hold the emergency brake button.
“Most modern systems will engage gradually to help slow the vehicle safely rather than locking up the wheels abruptly. If tapping the button doesn’t work, holding it down should activate a controlled emergency stop,” Bowser said.
If that doesn’t do the trick, Justin Dagres, service director for Troy-Alan Chevrolet/Buick/GMC in Slippery Rock — as well as a General Motors certified master technician — has a tip for those who own a car with a push-button emergency brake to avoid, or at least reduce the severity of, an accident.
“Put (your car) into manual mode and shift it down,” Dagres said. “Once you get it down to a certain speed, you can hit your automatic parking brake, and it’ll engage it to slow you down and stop you.”
Jerry Steiner, owner of Steiner’s Garage in Butler, has another tip for all drivers who experience brake failure while driving, regardless of what type of emergency brake is in their car.
“When brake failure occurs, first put the car in neutral, then apply the brakes. Most modern cars have a valve that splits the brakes,” Steiner said. “Be aware of your surroundings and don’t panic.
“An accident may not be avoidable, but look for something to stop you. If you must hit another car, try to sideswipe it to slow you down.”
Not only have the types of emergency brakes changed in vehicles over the years, but so has the material used for brake lines — and, as Dagres argues, for the better.
“Older vehicles used a steel brake line that would corrode and rust because of the brine and salt and Pennsylvania weather,” Dagres said. “But the newer lines are made of a copper/nickel-type material, and they're actually coated in the factory.
“In the last 10 years, I’ve fixed one brake line. Before, the whole steel would rot, and salt and brine would rust and rot them out.”
Burket says his regular mechanic told him the brake lines of modern cars are not as strong as they can be.
“He has replaced a lot of brake lines. Probably at least three or four vehicles for me over the years,” Burket said. “His story is that the brake lining that the factories use is a cheap brake lining, and all the calcium and chemicals and stuff that they put on the highway over a period of years will eat through it.”
Regardless, Steiner recommends that motorists routinely get their brake lines checked.
“Having brakes and lines checked for a small fee is better than losing them,” Steiner said.
