How to Respond to the Brake Warning Light

When you are driving and all of a sudden the brake warning light comes on, it is certainly difficult to maintain your cool. But you should never panic, suggests a veteran auto technician of a service center of San Luis Obispo car dealerships.

While explaining the best way to respond when the braking warning light comes up, he emphasized that one should have the basic knowledge about the brakes, as well as about the brake warning lights.

To make things simpler, he demonstrated that there will always be two brake lights among which one represents the main system and the other, the ABS system.

He assured that when the ABS components fail they allow the rest of the system to keep functioning in their usual pace, but if the main braking warning light turns up, it is indicative of the fact that there is a failure in the hydraulic system that needs to be serviced without a delay.

Hence, the best ways he suggested in which you can respond to the brake warning lights are:

Keep Your Cool and Pull the Car Aside

The first thing to do, whenever you see the brake warning light coming up, you must pull the car to a safer place, and start driving it back only after inspecting the car well.

Start Pumping the Brakes

After you see the brake warning light, the first thing to check is the position of the pedal. Try pressing it and see if it suddenly stoops down to the floor. If it does, then there is most likely the sign of a broken line. In such a case, you can try pumping the brakes gently and keep repeating the action for some time. With this action of pumping the brakes, you help the braking system build up the required amount of pressure that will push back the brakes to work.

Try a Downshift

You can allow the car engine to do some of the work of bringing back your car brakes to normalcy. If your car brakes have failed, immediately try getting off the road by downshifting the gears in order to reduce the speed to the minimal. This way you are reducing the probability of a collision and its impact as well.

Swerve in a Controlled Way

To turn off the speed, steer the vehicle to swerve the car sideways. That way the car will move slowly and will also stay under your control. Once you succeed to slow down, it will be easier for you to take harder turns and bring the vehicle to a complete stop.

Create an Alert

If you are on a highway, or on a runway, and your brakes are not responding the way it should, you need to alert others to let them know that your car is under an emergency situation. For this turn on the emergency light of your car that will have a red switch on the dashboard. This way, the traffic would keep flowing in its normal pace avoiding your car and you’ll be safe till roadside assistance reach you.

The mechanical experts of the car dealers near San Luis Obispo agreed unanimously that by the following al these measures, one can soar through a situation as difficult as a failed brake.