when your brakes fail, can you shift to Reverse in order to stop the vehicle? why or why not?

1.48K views

I’m mostly thinking about a scenario where you are going down a highway (say, at 120kmh for the sake of the example) and suddenly your brakes fail

could shifting to Reverse function as a brake in that situation?

edit: thank you all for the answers, I want to note that I myself don’t drive and did not consider doing this, I was just wondering if this was possible

have a lovely day o/

In: 11

75 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

I’ve had this happening to me, driving my trusty (turns out: not so much) old Fiat 850 towards a busy intersection. Best I could think of, was shifting to the lowest gear, from 4 to 1 in one go. It worked somewhat, the car stalled about 2 car lengths on to te intersection. I definitely scared the living daylights out of the rest of the traffic, not to mention myself and my mother, sitting next to me. The noises coming from the car! I was sure I’d ruined it, but I guess we were lucky. It started right up, and after some time, when the brakes had cooled down, I was able to coast home.

You are viewing 1 out of 75 answers, click here to view all answers.