Being in a car with malfunctioning brakes is always a terrifying situation and, if you’ve been around old cars long enough, it’s probably happened to you at least once. The only way to make it more terrifying is to be pregnant, alone, and slowly driving downhill toward a lake. That’s the situation a woman in Illinois found herself in earlier this week.
Before you get worried, this story seems to have a happy ending, Deputies for the Williams County Sheriff’s Office (WCSO) and the local 911 dispatcher do an incredible job tracking the woman down and performing a rolling roadblock procedure on the vehicle before it crashes into a lake. Additionally, the driver in this story, though obviously panicked, had the presence of mind to call 911 almost immediately in order to get help.
According to KFVS, this happened near Carterville, Illinois around 2:00 AM on Monday. Conveniently, someone has posted the audio of the call and the video of the intercept by police on YouTube, which I’ve embedded below or you can view here.
Even though this video has a happy ending so far as we know, it doesn’t mean it isn’t just a little terrifying. At one point the woman points out that she’s 20 weeks pregnant and therefore “cannot die today.” Hearing that sent shivers down my legs.
The dispatcher immediately does a good job of figuring out where the driver is and gets her to put the car in neutral. The dispatcher also tries to get the driver to turn the engine off, which is hard given that the 2016 Chevy Malibu in question has an electronic e-brake and a push-button start. Early on in the video you can hear the woman trying to stop the car by pushing the start/stop button, which it sounds like is etiher going into accessory mode or is simply refusing to turn off because the car is moving.
According to the woman, there is an issue with the car she was aware of and planned to get fixed, though she doesn’t specify what the issue is. She also says she’s on a hill so the vehicle, while slowing down uphill, speeds up while going downhill. You can see where she is on this map:
It does appear to be downhill slightly, which might explain why her car isn’t stopping. The driver does mention she’s got a manual shift-mode for her car and it maybe could have been helpful if the dispatcher had told her to put it in manual mode and attempt to shift the vehicle in order to slow down the car faster before engine braking kicks in, though with a panicky person that’s maybe too complicated of an instruction.
Additionally, even though the car only has an electronic e-brake, you can still use those to slow the car down. All of this is better advice than trying to have the woman turn the car at a 90-degree intersection at 30+ mph as it’s unlikely that maneuver would have done anything other than crash the car (though, perhaps that’s better than plunging into a cold, dark lake).
Ultimately, though, without having much information on the car the dispatchers do their job and three deputies manage to close in on the driver within minutes, stopping her car quickly with a rolling roadblock before she hits the lake. She got extremely close, as you can see above. Here’s what the WCSO posted about the incident:
After following the vehicle Deputies determined that it was unsafe to continue and a rolling road block was conducted.
The maneuver was performed by passing the vehicle, positioning in front of it, and then slowly decelerating until the front bumper gently made contact with the rear bumper of the patrol vehicle. Once contact was made the patrol vehicle utilized its brakes to bring both vehicles to a complete stop.The maneuver was successful and the runaway vehicle was stopped approximately 1/4 of a mile before reaching Crab Orchard Lake.
“Had the Deputy not been on scene or delayed performing this maneuver the driver and vehicle would have likely gone into the water upon reaching the lake”, stated Sheriff Jeff Diederich.
EMS responded to the scene out of an abundance of caution as the driver stated she was pregnant.
The Williamson County Sheriff’s Office patrol vehicle sufficed no damage and very minor damage was incurred by the runaway vehicle.
The driver is immediately apologetic for hitting the cop car, unaware that this is what the police were intendeding to do.
What do we think happened here? This car is under a recall due to a faulty electronic brake control module, but that mostly impacted the loss of ABS and ESC, not full brake failure. The driver also says she’s aware that the car has an issue, but doesn’t explain much what the issue is. Stephen Watler Gossin, who pointed out this video to us, thought maybe a throttle positoining sensor fail or just pure mechanical brake failure, but wasn’t sure.
Any guesses? Anything you’d have done differently in this situation?
Scary story, glad they were able to get to her soon enough to help.
I lost my brakes once in a late 90’s GM sedan around 2010. I had to panic stop on the way to work, someone cut me off. Apparently, that was enough to blow a brake line. Later on, when it was time for my exit, I hit the brakes and there was nothing. Between downshifting though the gears and use of the (actually functioning!) parking brake, I was able to get it safely around the offramp and stopped at the end.
As soon as I started driving, my grandfather told me to ALWAYS check your brakes before offramps. He told me a story about how he once lost his on an offramp and ended up in the woods.
Almost 30 years later, and I still do it. In the case of when I lost my brakes, it gave me time to prepare to slow before the ramp. If I had hit it at speed no way would I have made it around.
Kudos to the cop for not just PIT-ting her, as they do in Arkansas.
Seems like a series of failures occurred.
Insufficient/Bad/Dirty/Water in the brake fluid?Malfunction of the e-brake?Malfunction of the start/stop button?Malfunction of the gear selector to allow shifting into neutral?Why didn’t lack of accelerator input allow it to drift to a stop?It will be interesting to here any investigation results.
Just another good reason to own a manual. Slip into neutral and drift to a stop. No electronic nannies to stop you from doing that.
For the brakes to fail completely it was either total loss of brake fluid (my guess), or an actuator or valve failed preventing the master cylinder from applying pressure (not very likely to me).
As I approached the stop sign, loaded with firewood, and the kids, the brakes were not working. All I could do was to speed up or slow down to time running the stop sign without hitting someone. The drum brakes on my ’64 F100 crewcab were losing their ability to function, so I ended up installing disk brakes up front. When you have confidence in the ability to stop, it really makes driving enjoyable again. I had just planned far ahead my stopping plan for years, but loaded up with kids scared me disk.
considering the vehicles age i would bet there was enough water in the brake lines that it froze and caused the brakes not to work. Brake fluid exchanges is a maintenance item that buyers rarely opt to do. compounded by this being an “optional add on” line item when dealerships/ national chains do brakes that give the owner the option to decline the extra charge or service writers to forget to add it on.
First of all Kudos to all involved , except GM, for improvising a good outcome.
But isn’t turning the engine off exactly what was killing people in those Chevy Cobalts? Power steering , airbags and brakes apparently don’t work with the engine off
With all of the mandated safety standards I find it amazing that there is no standard that if any thing on a car fails, it can’t cause a cascade of safety related failures.
I had the ABS on a Volvo 740 fail because something was flaky about the speed sensors so that the ABS would engage and pulse the brakes for no reason rendering them very ineffective.
Nobody would remove the ABS because of legal liability.
I kind of understand the design behind “if a wheel isn’t sending rotation info, the brake must be locked” but not having an audit of what happens when system X fails is crazy. I would have put a test of “if the a wheel is turning and the brake is not applied but there isn’t rotation info from 1, 2, or 3 wheels, disable the ABS.
It reminds me of all of the buildings in New York in particular hospitals that had their emergency generators in the basement. Of course, when there’s a flood, no emergency generator. See also the Fukushima accident.
All the telecoms buildings put their emergency generators on the roof because they think about failure all the time.
A place I used to work, put up one of those stupid posters saying “Failure to plan is planning to fail“
I put up another poster saying that if you don’t plan to fail, you’re really screwed.
The response was pretty much divided between the “if I do my job and write the code exactly to specs, any bad outcome is not my fault” and the “ my responsibility is to the project as a whole and to the customer” Eventually they fired everyone in the latter group, who were all from the startup company that was acquired to get the project.
I thought the whole key ignition issue was that the steering column would lock…
Most cars run the power steering pump from a belt off the engine, so if your engine is stopped, there’s no way to get power steering. You’ll still have steering though, it’s just a lot more work.
Ditto for brakes, no running engine means no engine vacuum, so you’ll get one maybe two stops before you’re without power assist and having to use your muscles to push the brakes.
It would be possible to add a backup system for both, but they both fail gracefully (ie they still work, but not as well).
I can’t think of any land vehicle that has backups for them, not even a race or commercial vehicle.
Well the problem is when a car with an automatic transmission is designed so that the engine can stop running while the car is moving. Made even worse by having to put the car in park in order to restart the engine.
Also power steering when it doesn’t work is vastly more effort than unassisted steering on the same car, because you have to pump all that fluid
Electric brake boosters and electric power steering racks are a big improvement. Brake by wire and steering by wire are very much not improvements,
Until recently race cars didn’t have power steering or brakes. Or automatic transmissions either.
At one point the woman points out that she’s 20 weeks pregnant and therefore “cannot die today.”
Good thing she was pregnant! Without that info the cops would have stoped for coffee and doughnuts.
Same logic behind “Baby on board” stickers.
My understanding is those signs were originally intended to let emergency workers know to look for a potentially unconscious baby in the chaos of a wreck in the dark days before car seats.
That was a pretty competent 911 operator. Sometimes they are smack your head stupid and other times brilliant. That they collectively found her, kept her reasonably calm under the circumstances and managed to bring her car to a stop is amazing.
I’ve never experienced a runaway vehicle (and I have driven a lot of rental Malibus in my day) and will leave the speculation of what was at the root of this to others.
My Honda is new enough that it has a push to start button and old enough that it still has a hand brake between the front seats. I think I’m in the vehicular sweet spot.
I recently had a dodge pickup as a rental. It was a it too big for me, so I opened the door while backing it up to line it up and it immediately jammed on the brakes. I wonder if cracking the door open would have worked in this situation. Not sure when that became a feature. Either way, I’m glad she’s safe. Can you still shift into low and use engine braking? Not sure if an e-shifter will lock that out.
I’m guessing power brake booster failure, combined with unfamiliarity with unassisted brakes. I had the booster go on my corvette, and it was a bear to stop until I swapped it out. If you aren’t used to that, you may assume total brake failure.
I have a very tight drive so to fit all our cars on it I have a little paint mark for the rear wheel on the drivers side. I borrowed a courtesy car that was an auto and it was a nightmare to position because every time I opened the door to check the mark it went in to park.
It really got to me when she said she is 20 years pregnant and “can’t die today”. My wife is really savvy, but we just ran through what to do in this scenario regardless. I told her, if downshifting and using the parking brake fail, throw that b**** into park and we’ll worry about the transmission later.
Most cars all you get is a clicky clicky clicky sound and maybe a bang but not much slowing down if you’re going faster than three or 4 miles an hour. I had the brakes fail on a 1965 Plymouth, valiant and put the automatic transmission into park and all I got was the clicking noise. Fortunately, as it would happen, I was driving the car into a junkyard and there were plenty of junk cars to hit.
Junkyard owner: “great, now you ruined the transmission”
How does this fit in with the story?
I was replying to the suggestion that putting the transmission into park will stop a moving car.
It does not.
Yeah, Mythbusters did an episode on it. They got the exact result you did.
Good to know – thanks for correcting me. I remember, as a dumb kid, throwing an AMC into park while hooning in a gravel parking lot and locking up the wheels. Maybe the gravel let the tires slide enough so that the transmission won that battle, versus the opposite happening on dry pavement.
So far 20 weeks pregnant, 20 months pregnant, and 20 years pregnant. Seems are lady in distress is far more capable than the readers here.
I can say that a faulty ABS module can cause a car to lose braking with the pedal pushed to the floor – it happened to me in a 2007 Ford Edge on a highway off-ramp leading to a stop sign. I was barely able to come to a stop through a combination of pumping/standing on the brakes and yanking the parking brake. So the faulty electronic brake control module may really be the issue. I drove that car for a couple more years with the ABS fuse pulled, but I’ll never forgive Ford’s R&M department and SEs for being nitwits…that isn’t a failure mode that should make it into a delivered product.
Does she ever try the e-brake? My last two cars (a Honda and an Acura) have had electronic parking brakes, and the manual says if you pull it when you’re in motion, the car will stop as quickly as it safely can, which sounds like just the ticket for this situation. Maybe electronic e-brakes are not all like that, but that’s the very first thing I’d try.
Well apparently 20 times if you watch the clip.
I wasn’t able to watch the video, which is why I asked.
Found it really hard to brake after a brake pad got spit out of the caliper. Even the e brake barely worked. Hydraulic pressure sure didn’t. New brake pads fixed it.
2016 Malibu likely has Bluetooth brake pads.
I actually almost teared up when she started freaking out about hitting the cruiser. Obviously stress had a lot to do with the reaction but still… how screwed up are things when the first thing that comes to her mind after surviving a situation like that is worrying about how the police are going to act when they get to her car? Poor woman.
It is heartbreaking that we live in a world where someone in this situation is just as terrified of the cops who come their rescue as they are of driving into a lake.
She was freaking out don’t use this to put your political spin on it. These officers were professional if not heroes but yeah use your prejudice to attack them. I hope you start behaving better.
Do you have anything better do do than antagonize every single person commenting on this article?
Well, there’s a reason they’re in such a poor mood. It’s all in their name, and that car has a wretched 4 speed manual transmission! How sad for 1978fiatspyderfan. The best we can do is encourage them to find a car with a better transmission that won’t leave them needing to tediously shift gears, and getting poor gas mileage because of it.
I’m sorry you felt the need to react this way; I didn’t attack anyone, I have no political agenda. I was just expressing my sadness that this driver experienced layers of stress and trauma that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
I was taught to treat others as I would like to be treated myself; with empathy and respect. I will continue doing my best to behave better, as we all should.
I imagine that is incredibly frustrating to a lot of cops. Those bad situations and flat out bad apples tarnish the good reputation of the majority, and now the good guys have to deal with people being afraid of them even when there’s nothing to be afraid of.
Don’t be a dick. These guys saved her life and were professional if not heroes but yeah put your political bias spin on it.
Thus spoketh the gatekeeper…
I’m just stating the reality of our country, not putting any spin on anything. I have two cousins who are LEOs, and from what I know of them they are very upstanding guys. I have no dog in this fight.
I was just sharing my feelings on how this woman, who just survived a potentially deadly situation, had an immediate reaction not of relief to be alive and safe, but to apparently fear to have to deal with police officers.
They did their jobs, saved her life, and I’m sure they were very gracious and comforting to her once they got her to roll down her window or step out of the car. But this woman very obviously was filled with fear. And that is very sad.
I didn’t know this… But I just looked it up in the manual for my BMW g20 and the little parking brake switch is also emergency braking.
Thanks Matt, I learned something useful today.
Let’s hope you never need this knowledge.
I used the word useful, but honestly I hope this is never actually information I need to use.
It’s good to know anyway
I had no idea either, never trusted electric brakes because I thought you lost the original emergency brake function.
This is true of any vehicles I’ve had with an electronic parking brake button.
We had a brand new F-150 growing up. Driving into town one day and went to hit the brake pedal and it was hard as a rock and no brakes. After about 5 seconds of pushing hard enough it seemed to break the pedal, something finally released and the brakes worked again. I’ll never forget that.
That sounds like a quirk in the power-assisted brake frammitz. Gonna cost you…
And that seems like what happened here, too. Not enough strength in driver to brake without power-assist, which is probably the cause.
Or, no brake fluid, meaning no brakes at all, but that is an easy diagnoses that would not require us to guess here and now.
I don’t ask for much in my cars: I want the brakes to work, I want the steering to work. The absolute minimum. Those are important safety shit.
Car doesn’t start? OK, I’m not gonna die, but I’ll be slightly peeved.
I also want to have some fun, and my fun requires brakes and steering.
I was thinking this as well. Loss of power brake assist with a person who unfamiliar with non-assisted brakes in a modern car can be distressing. I’ve been in a car that lost all power and, depending on the model, the force needed on the pedal to stop can be significant. If her seat position was farther than recommended, that could also play a role in her ability to apply enough force to a non-assisted brake pedal. Of course, this is all purely speculative.
At 20 weeks pregnant the seat is probably back pretty far.
BTW: If you want maximum pressure on the brake pedal, keep in mind that you exert maximum force when your leg is almost fully extended, so adjusting your seat so you can really mash the pedal, then adjust the back and the wheel so it’s comfortable.
I have pretty long legs, and getting the pedals far enough away and the steering close enough is always a pain. Then the people in the back seat complain
I know what the problem is, its a Chevy, you know what “Chevy” stands for, right? Fix it Again, Tony
Right?
So close! It’s actually “Found On Road Dead”. It’s an easy mistake to make
Oh, yeah, that makes more sense
You’re thinking of FIAT Dale
Fix…it…again…
Seems like similar year Malibus with brake issues have a bad pressure switch that firms up the pedal a lot. Best guess is this was the problem and it was late, and she was pregnant, so an unexpectedly firm pedal could be strong enough to stop her from being able to brake.
Amusing but also horrible typo
> At one point the woman points out that she’s 20 months pregnant and therefore “cannot die today.”
20 months / 20 weeks close enough
If she’s 20 months, she would welcome death.
I remember when my wife was in her 20th month of pregnancy like it was yesterday, because it almost was…
At 20 months, she might look something like this before she pops:
GROTESQUE HORROR WARNING
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=or4W_qK70zk
I just watched the video, holy crap that makes me tense.
Tonight I’m going to head out and teach my 12 year old all the ways I can think of to stop the car in an emergency situation
I started teaching my daughter about driving around age ten (much simpler vehicle back then, though). One big thing I did was, whenever she had a snow day from school once 14-15, I would take the day off and we would go practice recovering from skids. It paid off as she called me one morning from college up north and told how she had hit ice, remembered what I had said, turned in and gently fed it, and pulled it out. Repetition worked!
Also taught her the hierarchy of things to hit—and told her explicitly to use guardrails, ditches if not deep, etc if having a runaway/on steep hill
That’s awesome.
With my kid I’ve started talking through the decisions I make while driving. I’m thrilled because they’re starting to point out the kind of things I look for.
Of course about half the time it’s “ugh convertible with the top up on a nice day”. That’s how I know we’re related.
One of the reasons I’m not on social media was the hatred I got the time someone posted a picture of my Elise with the roof fitted on a sunny day.
Just because someone has the option of being in a noisy, windy, smelly, high-cancer environment doesn’t mean they want it all the time.
Maybe she identifies as an elephant? /s
I’ll see myself out now.
I was going to point out the gestation period of an elephant, but you beat me to it. 🙂
I would have tried to put it in L and then used the shift buttons. Most GM cars have it on the shifter. I’m not sure if this Malibu has them or not because the later ones are cvts.
neutral and hold the E brake switch until it engages.
“Put it in “H”!!! (Simpsons reference)
Is she an elephant?
Elephant woman almost crashes car into cold dark lake
LOLOLOL.
Proof not all cops are bad! Hats off to them for responding so quickly.
Bodycams show they pulled her from the car and beat her.
Just kidding, she was white.
I hear you but skin reflectivity isn’t guarantee of safety:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Justine_Damond