Road workers were smoothing the one at Chideock in Dorset when I passed last week. I wonder how often they get used in anger, the Chideock one often has a few ruts in it but they seem to be too short to have been from a runaway. Perhaps it?s people mucking about with trail bikes or something.
GH
When I've seen ruts in this one
I wonder how often vehicles have to use them. Is it heavy vehicles like HGVs that tend to suffer brake failure more than cars do? Obviously a runaway truck will do a lot more damage than a car to anything it hits.
Or idiots don't realise what they are and use them as a convenient place to stop and so enter slowly.
SteveW
Modern vehicles seldom need these traps, old ones routinely ran out of brak es on longish or steep descents. While every driver of such things knows or should know to engine brake, monitor the brakes and stop before they run o ut, now & then that process went wrong somehow. It was normally commercials that ended up in the gravel.
NT
Wonder if the steam brakes are failsafe, i.e. you need steam pressure to release
Last time I had brake fade was with some brand new pads in the mid 80's with one of the first asbestos free compounds. If not properly cured the bonding chemicals outgassed if the pads were pushed hard on the road, leading to a gas barrier between the disc and pad and not much braking. After driving and bedding in the pads progressively for maybe 15 mins, doing a bit more than 60 coming up to a T junction and suddenly having a very soft brake pedal do not very much is a bit unpleasant. Luckily the road was wide enough and quiet enough to use the handbrake and a bit of steering lock to scrub off enough speed to avoid the hedge and field but I was still over the white line.
Fresh brake fluid too so no possibility of fluid boiling although it felt exactly like that.
Once the pads had been through one 'extreme' heat cycle then they performed without a problem in normal service.
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