"
Emergency Air Brakes complement standard air-brake systems and can be activated by pulling a button on the dash (near the one with the light that we saw in the introduction). Before you can drive a vehicle with air brakes, you must push in the emergency brake button to fill the system with air. As long as the emergency system is pressurized, the emergency brake will remain free. If the system has a leak, the pressure can decrease enough to engage the emergency brake. In addition, heavy trucks are often equipped with an exhaust brake that aids the braking process, but this relies on the engine, not the air-brake system."
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I've often wondered about the "safety" of the type air brake system that automatically locks the emergency/parking brakes when the air pressure reaches
the critical low level.*Some systems are like that, some are not. Not all the trucks I drove would pop the E-Brake botton when the air was low. Like that ford
9000 dump truck, it got so low that I had no brakes at all and the button never popped. *Now I
think this is right. I could be wrong and it could have
just been a malfuction in the system somewhere.
The reason I wonder about its safeness is, what if your driving in snowy conditions and your busy looking at the road ahead and if the air pressure buzzer
fails to warn you that your getting low on pressure and your E-brake botton pops locking up all your wheels? You would be up shit creek without a paddle!
Your 18-wheels just turned into 18-ice skates.
I've never heard of this happening. So I don't know, just something I've wondered about.
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