Brake On Me

Brakes are handy things on vehicles. Millions of us put our utmost faith in them, our very lives, every time we climb into a car or board a bus. Most of us don’t break into a clammy sweat as we accelerate above 20mph with the nagging fear that nothing will happen when the brake pedal is depressed. A lot of very clever engineers and some very risk-averse quality assurance managers over the last ten decades have made brakes so utterly and tediously reliable that we don’t give them a second thought. And so we hurtle around in our metal boxes, staying alive only through a heady mix of engineering guile, our own instinctive reactions, and luck.

Of course if we think about brake failure at all, we think of the worst kind - the brakes not engaging when required. This is the type of brake failure depicted in many Hollywood films of a certain genre, with shots of the driver’s foot stamping on the pedal cutting to shots of their horrified face as the edge of the cliff approaches. Seldom do we concern ourselves with the second-worst type of failure of a braking system, which is when the brakes decide all by themselves to engage when NOT required. I’m not aware of this scenario ever having been dramatised (although it’s possible that the car Kit in the 80’s TV series Knight Rider may have occasionally decided to jam on the brakes by itself for some very good reason.)

So when this exact thing happened to me on Tuesday evening as I drove the minibus home from an outing to Dorchester cinema to watch Twelve Years A Slave, I was momentarily taken aback. We were pootling along a dark country lane at 40mph when all of a sudden the vehicle was braking hard all by itself. I was able to bring it safely to a stop after several seconds of bemused deceleration, engine still running. It appeared to be the handbrake that had engaged, not the regular brakes. The handbrake lever was rendered useless - it would not even pull up.  The back two wheels were held fast by their drum-brakes.

It was good fortune that we had been on a straight section of a quiet lane, only four miles from home. Had it occurred fifteen minutes earlier we would still have been on the A35, a mostly single-lane, winding and hilly trunk road. 

The AA was called, as was Pilsdon’s rescue service (a.k.a. Craig in the Citroen Berlingo) to collect the rest of the passengers leaving Clive and I to await the AA. The incredible usefulness of mobile phones was duly noted. By bashing the back wheels with a heavy object we had managed to loosen the drum brakes so we could park the bus at the side of the lane and let the occasional car past, but we thought the burning smell was an indication that we shouldn’t attempt to drive it all the way back. 

Forty-five minutes later an alien spaceship descended on us, covered in red lights, and two bright tractor beams switched on to draw our vehicle up the ramp which had unfurled. Out of a door which opened up in its side stepped a figure, which wobbled its way towards us and introduced itself as Alan.  We said hi. Alan tied the minibus wheels to his truck, we climbed into the cab and off we drove back to Pilsdon, somehow negotiating the thirty-six foot-long beast down twisting lanes which were no wider than it. I then had to reverse the minibus back off the ramp taking care not to slip off either side, and it was done. Home safe and not a single casualty. Alan vanished into the night leaving only an A4 carbon copy of a rescue service form to prove his existence.

The bus was fixed the very next day by Pilsdon Autos across the way but I have yet to hear what precisely had gone wrong and how it has been rectified. For my own peace of mind I hope to find out the details before I get behind the wheel again.