As a local stock car racer I can tell you that 15 laps, hard on the gas for maybe 5 seconds then firm braking for 2 to 3 seconds will turn new brake fluid brown in a pretty stock 2nd gen Camaro. That's 60 to 90 seconds of NOT hard braking with new fluid, no moisture. We bled the brakes before every race. Also from the stock car world, some tracks insist on mechanical throttle linkages. That may be in conjunction with a toe clip so you can lift the pedal. Saskatoon, at least in the lower classes, allows a cable. Higher classes may require a push/pull twin cable setup. GM switched from a mechanical linkage to a cable in 69 or so. I've had both types of linkage stick, I"ll trust my life to a property set cable any day. Having had throttles stick, the first thing I do is well, I guess brakes, but my hand is killing the ignition. Key switch, military style toggle, whatever shuts that power down. Hopefully after thinking it through in advance a person can follow through without having to build muscle memory from real panic situations. That's my rant, thanks for listening.

I was hoping you’d give your take on this unfortunate accident. Great video. Thanks again Gary I learned something new today.

Good point on the fluid!!! But they should have just pulled over sooner and addressed the stuck throttle. I have had front brakes fail and used the e-brake to stop, and also had a stuck throttle, both are not fun at all and you have to think very fast...I came out of both fine. Yes there have been lot's of talk abut this and hope everyone that builds their rides has some takeaways ........Thanks for your take Gary......

it is not boiling brake fluid it is the nut behind the wheel

The throttle hanging up was the only major mistake imo... No brake system is going to hold 1300hp in traffic for long if it wants to idle at 50mph. We can argue about what he should have done when the brakes failed, but ultimately it is a situation that they wouldn't have had to navigate if the throttle issue had been addressed.

Makes me think I’d should probably replace the fluid in my truck. As it is about 22 years old now lol. This whole situation was one massive mistake after another. Just stopping would have saved everyone this trouble. The crash is nothing but the drivers fault for failing to address the problems early to prevent the crash.

If the car looked familiar to anyone reading Popular Hot Rodding, it was on page 28 of their August 2007 issue. where the owner/builder said, "thou shall not build a car without sufficient stopping power". Huh. Anyway, if you shut the engine off on a car with a steering column made after 1970, you risk locking the wheel. downshifting will add RPM and torque. Best to go for Neutral and head right for that lawn--take out parked cars rather than occupied ones.

If he'd turned the ignition off ,and downshifted ,the compression from a v8, especially one of that capacity, would have dramatically slowed it down ,maybe even to a stop. And all those comments from people about how the car should have been updated to newer brakes is annoying ,they were willwoods, newer willwoods aren't going to stop the fluid boiling. And how crazy not having a parking brake , if it was ever parked on a hill ,it would only be the parking pall holding it .

Utter stupidity taking a defective car and driving it around,, taking out a liable car.

I had a brake fail in a brand new chevy express, the pedal got disconected at 50m/h, very similar to this crash. 4 second is not enough time to think about what is the best way to stop the vehicle

A lot of people laugh when you tell them you drive a Volvo but one thing Volvo has never gone cheap on is the braking system. My first Volvo was a '74 and it came with power four wheel disc brakes with a dual split triangular braking sysytem (both front brakes connected to one rear brake per line), 4-piston front calipers, 2 piston in the rear, vented front rotors, copper alloy brake lines, proportional braking valve and DOT 4 brake fluid. And that was all standard on a '74! I believe this braking system had been standard for a few years earlier. Needless to say, I have never experienced a brake failure in any of my Volvos in the more then 40 years that I have been driving them.

It doesn't matter what kind or expensive brake system this clod had on his car, riding them hard like had been will boil the fluid. And, throwing any automatic into Park at that speed does NOTHING. The pawl will not engage at speed and all it does is skip the detents and makes a clak-clak sound. An "emergency" brake is useless. If you paid attention, the brakes were boiling, so a parking brake would do nothing to help. Not just the fluid, but the pads/linings were flaming hot. I'd bet that the throttle return spring(s) were in the wrong position to pull the liknage shut. Or, there was serious binding in the assembly. Either way, the driver made every mistake he could.

I just thank God that nobody got killed from that accident. I'm no expert, but I just hope that high maintenance brakes and a high maintenance fuel system will be maintained in order that nobody will get killed by that monster!

I like your take the other points are camshaft and torque converter. Large race cams have a high ideal 1600 to 2500rpm a converter if not high enough will and push and will over come the brakes also if he keeps this on the street he needs to put it in neutral before stopping other wise it’s going to overwhelm it as you said nomatter what breaks he has on it .

I thought this was one of the funniest videos that I have seen on KZfaq as of late. The look on the driver's face when he realized that he didn't have any brakes was priceless! The other dude who face planted the dash was pretty funny too. Definitely worth a watch if you haven't seen it yet!!

I owned a 1986 IROC-Z without rear brakes. In winter you could not stop. This is driver error, you put it in neutral before each stop. Then push on brakes and stop. Then back into 1 and go again. Then again into neutral before you stop, and stop. Been there, done that. It's easily overcome.

I don't think any car shouldn't not of have a E brake on the road .here in NZ it's totally illegal not to have one

Great video Gary. You hit all the points. If somethings not right, stop.

Hi I did a video on this to I didn't talk about the boiling point of the brake fluid but didn't think I needed to really If your riding the brakes as you said they were going to boil no matter what fluid or brakes it had . . Good point though

He has a shifter meant for drag racing. He couldn't downshift without going into park 1st. A street able shifter and/or killing the engine would have made all the difference

Gary👨🏽‍🔧👍🏽

Savable by killing ignition. Or put into nuetral for that matter ... 5 seconds of reaction time is actually a lot in that scenario. We all know time slows waaaaaaay down ...

As everybody and their dog has said, the moment he had a problem with the throttle is when he should have turned it off and stopped the vehicle, even if he had to stop in the middle of the road. Also, like you correctly pointed out, with 1300 HP and constantly riding the brakes it wouldn't have mattered what he had trying to stop the wheels, the braking system would have failed. The ONLY good thing out of all this is that nobody got killed or seriously injured.

He simply had to deploy the parachute.

Should have built it with manual transmission for a start, and with a handbrake. Having said that, the major mistakes here were ignoring the problem with the throttle and riding the brakes, anyone with common sense would have pulled over immediately.

I rented a Hertz GT350H years ago, and street raced it hard. After a lot stop light to stop light racing, drove home and the brakes failed entering my folks driveway. Jammed it in park, hit the emergency brake and ignition off. It stopped before hitting the garage door. Hertz waived the $19 rental charge because of the brake failure.

shifter in that car has reverse lockout you need two hands to release the lockout and move the shifter to reverse .

Bet he wishes he turned off the ignition. He panicked. Which I can understand. The 5 seconds would have been much longer

It wasn't brake failure. The engine was idling way too high so he rode the brakes.... that's stupidity.

guy should not be driving some like that because he doesn't know how to handle it. should have shut the car down as soon as the throttle got stuck but he kept driving so he doesn't need to be driving something like that and no e break that's just asking for trouble

This vehicle simply does not belong on public streets. It's not a street car. It's a pretend race car.

Turn the ignition off

I would think a car guy should know that riding the brakes can lead to failure. Like someone else said....the guy had no business behind the wheel of that much power. Luckily he didn't seriously injure anyone else.

the passenger had time to slide the harness around his shoulders.. could have saved him a lot of pain. both of them are idiots.

the owner even said his brakes are old tech and he wanted to upgrade them "in the future" Wrong! I agree with all of the other comments. He was wrong driving this car with a stuck 1300 HP motor! Both should have stopped as soon as they smelled brakes. Everything this owner did was wrong. If I was the guy that got hit and would have sued his for everything he has.

Typical Orange County

Long time owner of a 64 Comet here so ya hurt big time for Russ and those involved. My beef is with the sjow host and his totally selfish reasons for showing the vid to start with,, gives the whole hotrod community a black eye. His selfishness could very well come back to haunt all of us.

This is hard to watch not the wreck but the narrator way to many uh uh uh