Give Your Brakes a Break!

Your brakes are without a doubt the most important safety feature on your vehicle. When they don't work, it puts lives in danger and your vehicle literally becomes a ticking time bomb. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation Bureau of Transportation Statistics, there were 6,159,000 auto accidents reported in 2005. Of these, 2.7 million resulted in personal injuries and 43,443 fatalities. Mechanical failures (like bad brakes) are a factor in an estimated 12% to 13% of all auto accidents according to several available sources. Many of those are due to bad brakes because of a lack of proper vehicle maintenance, something that could have been prevented.

Properly functioning brakes take on the job of stopping your vehicle. When you step down on the brake pedal, your car transmits the force from your foot right to the brakes through a fluid - brake fluid. Of course, just your foot isn't enough to force to stop the vehicle, so your car multiplies the force through both mechanical advantage, also known as leverage, and hydraulic force multiplication. The brakes work to transmit the force to your tires through the process of friction. The tires also use friction against the road. There is a little more to it than this, but it can be complicated for the average driver. Most cars actually utilize two or three systems of brakes. You can see a shiny metal disc when you look through the hubcap of your front tire. That is what is known as a disc brake. When you step on the brake pedal, a pad of hard-wearing material clamps onto the brake disc and rubs it to make it slow down in a similar way to bicycle brakes. Other vehicles may have drum brakes on the back wheels which work with a show that pushes into the wheel and friction then slows you down. No matter what type of brakes you have on your vehicle, once you start accelerating and reach a decent speed, your car has loads of energy with it. When you start to stop, that very energy is converted into heat in your brake pads. Brakes can actually heat up to temperatures of 950 degrees Fahrenheit or more. This said brakes must be comprised of materials that won't melt at these temperatures like alloys, ceramics, or composites.