Quote:
Originally Posted by Thulsa
I tried to do this on purpose with my various cars.
I had a similar car to yours - a Chevy Geo. While driving along, I put my foot on the brake and then floored the gas. The brakes easily overpowered the engine.
Try this on your car.
I did my tests at city and highway speeds with various cars.
Really, I think everyone needs to try this at least once so they know what to expect.
Car magazines have done this test a number of times over the years. I recall that when the car gets much over 500 HP, then brake force required to both overcome the engine and stop the car from speed was so great that brake fade set in so the stopping distance from 100 mph was almost a mile.
Here's the caveat though, and what some people suspect is happening in some cases. It is that people don't press the brakes as hard as they can. If the engine races on a car with a decent engine and you press the brakes hard but not with maximum force, then you can get into a brake fade situation eventually and the stopping distance becomes very long if not nearly infinite.
I suspect that it could be somewhat more likely with elderly people with weak legs, bad knees, etc, or inexperienced drivers who have never been in a slam-the-brakes situation.
I've experienced brake fade back in the old days of drum brakes; it's a bad experience.
The best answer is to turn the engine off and put the car in neutral. Or push in the clutch if you have one.
Another story on the topic. I was test-driving a BMW. It was one of those models with the push a button to start the car. So we're driving along and I thought of the unintended acceleration problem. I was also thinking of the case where the driver becomes incapacitated; what can the passenger do to turn it off.
I asked the salesman while we were on the highway "So, if I needed to turn the car off for some emergency, how do I do that without a key to turn".
He didn't know.
I pulled into a parking lot later and tried pushing the button at about 25mph. Nothing happened. Uh-oh, it was designed so you cannot hit the button and turn off the engine while you are driving.
He said "I suppose if there is an emergency we could look in the manual and then laughed."
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Because of some of the previous unintended acceleration issues, most new cars now override throttle when the brake is applied. Toyota was slow to put in this fail-safe, but it is very common now, so the main issue goes away.
Similarly, as for the start/stop button, as they are disabled above a certain speed, most manufacturers also have a sequence for emergency override. I believe many use a "press and hold" and a couple use a double or triple press.
Finally, many of the new electronic emergency brakes also have an override feature at speed. For many, you can pull and hold the lever to get the emergency brake to come on at speed.
Not something you'll all figure out on a test drive, but these are important things people should know about in their own vehicles.
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