4 ms·

According to this podcast, in order to stop the car you just need to brake, as brakes are always more powerful than the engine https://www.pushkin.fm/episode/b

• camhenlin 4y ago
  > brakes are always more powerful than the engine That's really not true at all. Generally, as braking systems pick up heat, they become continually less and less efficient at slowing the car down and will eventually stop working entirely. This will be especially true when fighting against an engine running at wide open throttle. It's called brake fade.
  • BoorishBears 4y ago
    Brake fade is a thing, but firm deliberate use of the brakes would slow the car down enough for you to turn it off well before your brake fluid was cooked. The problem is having the presence of mind to do that when confronted with such an unusual situation
  • hatsunearu 4y ago
    In my experience brake fade doesn't kick in until an inordinate amount of heat gets generated (think like full send down a steep mountain for tens of minutes) or you're doing something stupid (like full send down a steep mountain for tens of minutes)
• InitialLastName 4y ago
  Malcolm Gladwell has a long history of taking every opportunity available to use misleading interpretations of evidence to justify his fables [0 for a notable example]. I would take anything he puts an "always" behind with a very large (boulder-sized) grain of salt. [0] http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2013/07/culturalism-gladwell-and-airplane.html http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2013/07/culturalism-gladwell-...
• jandrese 4y ago
  I think the issue is that a runaway engine will lose vacuum which makes the brake boosters ineffective.