582: Brakes
| Brakes |
 Title text: It was the funniest 6.5 seconds of my life, although as usual like 80% of it was just Tom and Ray's gasping, hacking laughter. |
Explanation
A car's brakes fail on a winding mountain road. As a response, the driver calls a live radio phone-in show, overlooking the fact that he is in immediate danger and has no time to gather outside advice before improvising a solution. The driver loses control of the car and plunges over a cliff.
If this ever happens to you,
- Downshift into second and then first gear, which should limit your vehicle's speed
- Use your "emergency brake," it's not just for parking
- Shifting an automatic transmission into Park may stop the vehicle, or
- Turning the ignition off, with the transmission still in gear, may stop the vehicle
- Otherwise, find a safe place to coast to a stop, if possible, or else
- Try to wreck your car in a way that won't kill you or your passengers. Aim for something that will slow you down before stopping you, like a stand of bushes.
http://www.wikihow.com/Stop-a-Car-with-No-Brakes
Car Talk is a car advice/comedy radio show often aired on NPR stations. While there is some actual advice given on the radio show, it is presented as a comedy/entertainment show. Much of the show does involve the hosts "gasping and hacking" as they ask non-relevant questions of the callers and add their own commentary or relate other personal asides and stories.
Transcript
- Of the potential responses to my brakes' failure, I did not choose the best.
- [A cliff is visible, with a car flying off it.]
- Voice from car: Hello, you're on Car Talk.
Trivia
- NPR made a shirt out of this comic, it can be seen at shop.npr.org.
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The shirt would have been even better if they would have put the alt-text underneath! -- mwburden 70.91.188.49 20:53, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
Car Talk wasn't a live call-in show! You call them, and they call you back, and it's edited into a show structure! 173.245.54.50 00:48, 23 January 2014 (UTC) True... but the version in the comic has to be a live show for the joke to work, and most listeners, unless they called in, probably didn't realize it wasn't live somewhere.173.245.54.34 03:45, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
The t-shirt link leads to a 404 from NPR's wobsite. -- T 162.158.58.208 22:07, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
The 6.5 seconds could refer to a non-immediate death on impact, solving the conundrum posed by timing of physics and communication in the explanation. -Arkady Darrel 162.158.58.219 03:46, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
The car still has forward velocity, so it could keep traveling to an even steeper drop outside of the frame guess who (if you want to | what i have done) 19:24, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
