On my way home tonight after work, my brakes went out. Totally, no resistance, down to the floor. In a narrow, busy village lane, with tons of commuter traffic. I found out that I was sans brakes when I tried to stop for one of those inconsiderate idiots who get a call on their mobile or whatever, and rather than bumping their car partially up on the sidewalk (there IS no pulling over onto the shoulder on a lot of roads here), they leave it smack in the middle of the lane. Shifted down, pumped the brakes like mad, and managed to slow and pull into an empty lot.
So, I guess I work from home tomorrow, and have our production meeting via ICQ. This is NOT great. :(
aaaaaaaaaah! I’m just glad YOU are okay. not fun at all.
Glad to hear you weren’t harmed in the making of this entry :)
It’d be an absolute nightmare for me to push the brake pedal and have no response :/
How scary – a friend and I had our brakes go out when we were going down a hill once and were totally lucky that there was no oncoming traffic and we were able to make a series of turns that eventually slowed and stopped us…ugh, that feeling of not being in control is horrible, horrible. I am SO glad you were able to get into that empty lot and that you’re okay!
Yes, it was quite scary. :( I’m glad it was ok, but not happy about being carless right now.
Yes, it’s quite an uncomfortable feeling. Reminds me of something I read, that most people’s final words are something like “oh, shit!” lol…
Ack, that would be a nightmare – I was lucky that I was on the flat, and not going very fast since I was in a village. lol…come to think of it, it was one of the small villages that pisses everyone off because they’ve set speed cameras every few hundred feet through the town (or so it seems).
Thank goodness you are okay. Much better to be having your meeting from home than being in a hospital bed.
I can imagine :/
The closest I’ve ever come to that was after braking very hard to make allowances for some idiot, and then due to the deceleration and general untidiness of my car a bottle of water got stuck under my brake pedal :/
Yes – funny enough, my boss had a smash on his bike yesterday, and he’s in hospital. :( Not a good transportation day, evidently.
I’ve heard of a lot of accidents caused by bottles or thermoses or whatever getting stuck under the pedals. :(