40 yrs ago I had a brake failure at 120 mph at the dragstrip.
Your brain goes through about a million calculations as you roll along at that speed wondering WTF to do. I matted the brake pedal a few times, with no results. I put my ride into reverse and matted the throttle. That appeared to slow it down by about a tenth of a mph... as I flew off the end of the track doing a burnout in reverse.... through a barbed wire fence, across a graded road with good sized berms, then out into the desert - where I managed to hit every scrub brush, rock, or stick known to man. No minivans available to destroy.
The car had passed tech because the failure of the line-lock unit was a single event. No leak of brake fluid before it broke. When it failed there was no brake fluid pressure to the front brakes. Every time I hit the brake pedal thinking the brakes weren’t working at all - it locked the rear tires up. I couldn’t tell it because that won’t stop a car from speed at all. Neither does spinning the tires in reverse. LOL.
While the car got torn up, I was lucky in the fact that there was nobody else involved, the car didn’t tip over or find anything solid to hit, and the fact that I probably did scrub off some speed in the very long shutdown area before going exploring off road. It just didn’t seem like it at the time.
“Wheee doggie, we’re having some fast fun now!”
