This report on Daily Dot describes a stupid driver.

The woman was driving on a multi-lane highway in California when her brakes failed. The article describes the actions that she took to bring her vehicle safely to a halt on the hard shoulder, which included pumping the brakes, putting on her hazard warning lights, using hand signals to show other drivers that she wanted to pull over and putting the car into neutral.

Bizarrely, she didn't do what most European drivers would try first: using the hand brake (usually called the parking brake in the USA, even though it has other uses than just when parking). The amusing thing is that the report includes a photo of someone using the hand/parking brake, so obviously even the journalist knew to use it in this circumstance.

By law, all vehicles have a hand brake for safety reasons. The main brakes are usually hydraulic, and the hand brake is mechanical (it works using a cable), so that if the hydraulics fail the vehicle's hand brake, under virtually all conditions, will still work.

Part of the problem is that most cars in the USA are automatic, which means the gearbox has a park setting, so most American drivers forget that they even have a hand brake. Not knowing this can cost people's lives in cases like the one described in this article.