[fallinditch]

This story reminds me that I have a recurring nightmare: I am driving a car and the brakes hardly work at all, so I am in constant fear that something will go terribly wrong. This nightmare was born from a real experience with my first vehicle, a VW micro bus that had horribly squishy brakes.

[RHSeeger]

Many years ago, I was driving down the highway on my way to work and, when I pressed the breaks to slow down, the pedal just... went straight to the floor. I had to use the emergency break to slow down, get off the highway, and pull over. Luckily that still worked (I've owned many a car where that was the first thing to go).

So, it turns out the breaks rotted off and fell off the car on the way to work. I had had it inspected the previous day... and they didn't mention anything was wrong. I did not go back to that inspection place again.

[technothrasher]

When I was first dating my wife, I think it was our second date, she was driving a ratty old 82 SAAB 900 that her dad had handed down to her. While she was coming to a stop at a light, the brakes failed on her and she panicked. I reached over and pulled the emergency brake (luckily on the transmission tunnel and not by the driver's door in that car), and we stopped in time to just barely kiss the rear bumper of the car in front of us. The driver looked in his rear view mirror with a "WTF?" expression and I sheepishly mouthed "sorry". She made me drive the car back to her house on the emergency brake, as she was too scared. I then diagnosed it as the master cylinder, went to the auto parts store that afternoon and bought a new one, installed it and bled the brakes, and got her back on the road. She says now that was when she decided I might be worth marrying, but that she foolishly didn't realize that I came as a package deal with an unending string of "old ugly smelly sports cars".

[fallinditch]

Wow you were lucky. There was a driver in the UK whose accelerator got stuck, then his brakes burnt out and he was on a notoriously busy road traveling at 135mph - he survived! See https://www.the-independent.com/news/uk/this-britain/help-i-...

[wat10000]

This is what happened to quite a few people with the Toyota unintended acceleration issue. There was speculation that it was caused by bugs in the engine control unit. Officially the cause was found to be floor mats coming loose and holding the accelerator down. (I bought a new Toyota shortly after this and the dealer was very careful to show me how the floor mats worked and how to make sure they were properly attached.)

The brakes of a car in good working order should be able to overcome the engine and stop the car even if the engine is stuck at full power. But you have to do it decisively. Push the brake pedal to the floor and keep it there until you've stopped. What often happens is people are (very naturally) confused and not sure what to do, they'll brake but not hard enough, stop braking when it doesn't seem to work, try again, etc. This can heat up the brakes to the point where they're no longer effective enough to stop the car, and then you're really in for it.

[red369]

I agree with what you said about brakes overcoming the engine. I've seen tests which show it works on even monstrously over-powered cars, but it can feel like it's not working and if the driver reacts wrongly to that, then it may no longer work.

I think stopping the power from going to the wheels needs to be an easy option. I wish there was more importance given to being able to easily do this.

I think the two options are shifting to neutral, or turning off the engine. I tested in a late-00s automatic BMW, and you had to hold the start/stop button for what felt like a very long time to turn the engine off if the car was in Drive. In an emergency, I think most people would give up long before it turned off. In that car, it was easy to change to neutral though, so I don't have a criticism about that design. What concerns me is cars with the same approach for the start/stop button, but where it is hard to get to neutral. I think in the Toyotas which had unintended acceleration issues, it wasn't easy/intuitive.

Edit: Another comment reminded me of something I forgot to mention above. You don't want turning off the engine to be the first resort because you lose power steering, and eventually, power assisted brakes.

[red369]

I was with a friend in a 5L V8 Mercedes, and we were doing a quick drive around the block after some sort of maintenance. He floored the accelerator - I can't remember why that was required, except I assume it wasn't. I assumed he was only going to do it momentarily, but the car rapidly reached, and passed, stupid speeds for that road. Just as I started to say something about preserving lives of us, and anyone else on the road, he suddenly shifted to neutral and brought the car to a stop with the engine screaming away at the redline. He then calmly reached down, unjammed the accelerator, and then continued driving back home.

That car was automatic, but he drove cars with manual transmissions a lot, so that would make it an obvious thing to do. I think in some of the famous unintended acceleration crashes, it has been unclear whether the person tried to change to neutral. A lot of newer cars have a much less intuitive method of doing so as well.

There's nothing as good in this regard as cars with manual transmissions though, in terms of having a dedicated pedal which disconnects the engine from the wheels, which you practice constantly during daily use.

[toast0]

Seems like he wasn't able to get it out of gear, and then didn't want to turn off the engine because he'd lose power steering. Losing power steering isn't ideal, but seems like it'd be better than traveling at 135 mph, power steering is most important at low speeds, and I'd think better to have a bit of trouble with the steering as you get it stopped than to end up crashing it.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Not only did this happen to me (caused by a hole in a brake line), it occurred the week after I happened to take the time to fix the emergency brake that hadn't worked in years. But yet I have no luck at the casino!

[at-fates-hands]

Had a 84' Chrysler LeBaron. Brakes went out on the way home from work. Managed to get it to the closet auto body shop. They had it for three days, charged me $1,200 for a new master cylinder and a bunch of other stuff I didn't know I needed. I paid $500 for the car and tried to tell them to do the absolute minimum to get it going. Apparently that was the minimum.

Drove it home, brakes worked like a dream. Got up next morning, third stop light, brake goes all the way to the floor, I'm drifting into the intersection. I panic, look both ways and gun it through safely. Drove that thing with brakes barely working back to the shop. Calmly told them whatever they did? Didn't work.

Same thing. Another $800 bill, this time the brakes worked for a few more days, then it happened again. I took it to another shop. The mechanic asked what they told me they did and what they charged me for. I showed them both invoices. He pulled me aside with my car still on the lift and whispered to me, "Look man, they didn't do anything. They just filled the brake fluid up. When it all leaked back out is why your brakes kept going out. Imma fix this for a super discounted rate, but you need to get a lawyer, you got lucky not getting into an accident or killed."

I sued the shop, got all my money back and then some. About six months after they settled my suit, I got a call from the local paper asking why I sued them because they were doing a story on the shop scamming hundreds of people out of tens of thousands of dollars.

[CitrusFruits]

I have that exact same nightmare! The harder I press on the brake, the less it does, as if the brake power is following a logarithmic curve. Although I don't really know why I have that dream, no specific experience comes to mind.

[red369]

I've had that recurring nightmare too - I forgot about that! I've only had a little real world experience with it. I'm curious if anyone has had the nightmare without having experienced it in real life.

I owned a late 80s Corolla which had drum brakes on the rear, and they would fade by the bottom of a particularly long, windy, descent from a mountain range to a beach we used to go to. That was even with using lower gears to control speed. Everyone else on that road seemed to be in a modern pickup, following as close as possible to encourage me to drive faster.

Oh! And one traumatic towing experience. I'd forgotten what a real-life nightmare that was. I was helping a friend tow an early 90s Honda City with his pride and joy, Mitsubishi GTO. I was driving the tiny Honda. The rope we were using wasn't designed for the job. I think the ropes specifically designed for it have a little give. When this particular rope got slack, it snapped when tension was reapplied. And then it was retied, even shorter. It wasn't as long as I would have liked to begin with. I had to ride the brakes lightly to keep tension in it. And then of course, when it came time to stop at the traffic lights, the brakes were hot and faded. I would repeatedly, barely stop in time, coming slowly to a halt inches from the bumper of the GTO. Obviously, complaining to the kind of person who would think this was a good idea, wasn't particularly fruitful.

[thr0w]

Yeah I have the squishy/very soft/not really working brake nightmare.

[fallinditch]

Perhaps symbolizes a feeling of being out of control in some aspect of one's life? By all accounts quite common:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DreamInterpretation/comments/nnndju...

[thr0w]

Less interested in interpretation, more interested in the fact that lots of people have the same nightmares (squishy brakes, class test and you haven't been to school in decades, etc.). Here's one - I desperately need to make a phone call or send a text or enter an address into Maps, but I just make typos over and over. Anyone else?

[Stratoscope]

My first girlfriend, Kate, bought an old VW Bug for $200 from someone on Page Mill Road up the hill from Palo Alto.

I drove her up there in my Toyota Corolla that I later rolled over on Summit Road. I didn't realize I was upside down until I heard a scraping sound from the roof and saw the top of the windshield crinkling.

Apparently that was a thing with the 1970s era Corollas. Several years later a buddy's girlfriend who I had a secret crush on rolled her Toyota too.

With the car upside down, someone drove up, we gave it a mighty push and rolled it back on its feet! Then someone else stopped by and held a joint out his car window and said, "You look like you could use a toke."

Back to the Bug. I followed Kate down the hill into town and noticed she wasn't slowing down much around the turns. Then we got to Junipero Serra Blvd and she didn't stop at the red light. A pickup trick sideswiped the Bug and that got it to stop.

The only real damage to the Bug was a front fender, so we bought a new one at a junkyard and bolted it on.

Besides the brakes, the engine wasn't running so great either. We bought a carburetor rebuild kit and got it running much smoother.

Emboldened by those successes, I decided to rebuild the engine too. I was a member of the Briarpatch auto repair collective, where you could rent a spot in the shop and use their tools to do your own work, or pay their mechanic to do it.

I got the engine torn apart, with nuts and bolts and parts strewn across the shop floor.

Then I realized I was in way over my head and had no idea where everything was supposed to go. I asked the mechanic if he could take over. He looked at the mess, shook his head, and said "I'll do it, but this is the worst way to get a job."

We named our cars in those days. The Bug was named Gus, and later I got an MGB-GT that I named Maggie. And after that, a Fiat 124 Spyder which already had a cool name.

Spyder developed a different brake problem. I think there were air bubbles in the brake lines that expanded as they warmed up. Then the brakes would slowly and gradually clamp down. You'd be driving on level ground and find yourself having to press down more on the gas, as if you were driving uphill. And then the the car would come to a complete stop.

Instead of getting the brake lines flushed and fixed, I did the sensible thing: Each wheel had a brake bleeder valve, and I started carrying a combination wrench that fit those valves. When the car stopped, I loosened one of the bleeder valves and brake fluid spurt out onto the ground. This relieved the pressure in the brake lines and I continued on my way.

Kate and I also had a thing for the Porsche 914. We knew it was a joint venture between Volkswagen and Porsche, so we scrambled up those two names. When we saw one on the highway, we'd call out "There's a Vorp!"

[shermantanktop]

Whatever happened to Kate?

[Stratoscope]

Thanks for asking. Kate developed severe asthma, to the point where she was taking prednisone every day and started carrying a portable breathing machine. Eventually she succumbed to her illness.

Her many friends, including myself, miss her dearly, but her memory lives on in all of us.

(Usually I would not share this kind of personal medical information in public, but Kate passed on nearly 50 years ago, and I didn't reveal her last name, so I think it's OK.)

[shermantanktop]

Sorry to hear it, but at the same time those are great stories to remember her by. No matter one’s beliefs, we all live on in the memories of those who knew us.

[Stratoscope]

Thank you my friend.

Did you ever see the Pixar movie Coco? I have a feeling you will really enjoy it.

[shermantanktop]

My kids ambushed me with it and I was a complete wreck at the end.

[hn_acc1]

Same here.. I'm usually driving some conglomerate of my first 3 cars (all VWs) - MK1 Jetta GLI, MK2 Golf GTi 16v or VR6 Corrado (or sometimes a Scirocco which is related to the Corrado). And gear shifts are like 30-50cm long, and then the brakes start to fade..

I stopped having that dream nearly as often when I bought my '05 Subaru Legacy GT wagon.

What's even stranger is that my current Kia Stinger (a fun car!) becomes an exotic Maserati or Aston Martin or Jaguar in my dreams..

[wildzzz]

A teenager slammed a beat up Chrysler 200 into the back of my rental car. Once he managed to get the door open, he said something along the lines of "yeah the brakes don't work so well". Of course this was in Florida so there was never any expectation for his car to ever have working brakes. Luckily I paid for the LDW on the rental so it was not my problem.

[bluGill]

The only time my brakes went out on my I happened to be towing a 10,000lbs trailer. I was able to use the trailer brakes only for 10 miles of stop and go traffic (rural freeway under construction, the backup started just past the previous exit, and of course the brakes were working until then). I never want that to happen again.

[gdevenyi]

Fun fact, the VW microbus has the same engine as this Porsche.

[kerblang]

My driving nightmares, in order:

- I am utterly fucking shitfaced drunk and having great difficulty with reality in general

- I am completely blind, albeit sober

- I am driving from the back seat, for some reason (trying, at least)

- I am going uphill, but the hill keeps getting steeper, until finally I am completely vertical, and to my surprise, traffic is passing me

- Don't ask me how I know, but I have entered a no-oxygen zone and have to get out of there before I pass out

[throwaway422432]

- I am driving from the back seat, for some reason (trying, at least)

Yeah, this one with the added bonus of having the whole family in the car - and for some reason I'm not steering at all for a lot of the time.

Weird dream.

[RandomBacon]

> am driving from the back seat, for some reason (trying, at least)

That's the only driving dream I have ever had.

[throwaway173738]

Are you sure you’re not having flying dreams?