In all my years of driving complete beaters in awful road conditions, I’ve never encountered a mechanical failure that was that dangerous. The closest would be when I had a strut snap and punch a hole in my tire while driving down the highway. But even that didn’t wind up being particularly dangerous. I still had way more than enough control to just make a controlled stop on the side of the road.
The only mechanical failure I can think of which doesn’t always just allow you to make a controlled stop is a busted brake line or master cylinder. But a lot of times that will still result in a slow enough loss of braking capability that you still have time to make a controlled stop before your braking ability is gone. Everything else that I can think of will render the vehicle completely undrivable before it breaks in significantly dangerous way. Of course that doesn’t mean that things won’t break in a far more expensive way if ignored.
I mean… I agree the vast majority of the time car problems are not dangerous. But at the same time I saw a car randomly catch on fire while it was still moving soooo yeah. (for info the guy got out just in time and was perfectly fine)
That’s fair. But even so, as long as you have brakes then you can always stop. As long as you have brakes and steering you can always stop fairly safely. I already said a sudden brake failure could be dangerous. I can’t think of any way you suddenly completely lose steering. There are plenty of failures that make steering way harder but I’ve seen a vehicle completely dragging a dead front tire sideways (hit a deer and broke something major, I was only a witness so I don’t know what) still have enough steering ability to safely pull over. I guess your steering wheel could fall off but I’ve never heard of that happening without someone tampering with it.
All it takes is for one of these things to stack with other, less avoidable, problems. Say you’re driving in ice or during the rain, maybe on a shitty road full of holes; Now a steering failure that wouldn’t mormally be enough to cause an accident, suddenly becomes much more deadly.
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