Losing the brakes on a car while driving can be one of the worst nightmare one can have, especially when one is driving at high speed. These situations can be quite dangerous if the driver is not familiar with the techniques of stopping the vehicle in such a situation. There can be number of reasons why something like this would happen in a car. The brake wire might just snap or the master cylinder might leak which would result in losing all the pressure required to apply the brakes. There are several techniques to stop a vehicle in such a situation but, here we have a video that shows one of the most efficient and safest way to do it.
The video has been uploaded by Knowledge Kingdom on his youtube channel. The video shows an efficient way of stopping a car that has lost brakes in just 8 seconds. Almost all the mass segment cars sold in the country get a manual hand brake. In case, the driver finds that he has lost the brakes, he should try to stay calm and first thing he needs to do is to remove his foot from the accelerator pedal. Then he or she should pull the handbrake mid-way (halfway up). If he pulls it fully up, then it might lock the rear wheels and driver will lose control.
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Once he has pulled the handbrake mid-way, he can slowly start down shifting the gears one by one. Make sure that you do not skip any gears. For example, never skip from 5th to 3rd. Go from 5th to 4th and then to 3rd. Down shifting like this will help driver stop the car using the handbrake and the engine braking. Following the process allows the car to rapidly shed speed.
Using this method, the driver can bring down the car to a halt from about 60 kmph in about 8 seconds. If the speed is any higher, the time required will be more. In case, the driver is running out of space to do all this, he can try to avoid other vehicles and objects on the road and can simply guide the car to the shoulder and hit the side rails or bushes to slow down the car. This is meant to be used as a last resort.