Brakes = FAIL

This morning, Pola, my MIL & I took Neil over to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia for a checkup on his foot. We got as far as Cherry Hill, Route 70 & Green Tree road, big intersection - and, voila, the brakes failed. So, there I was red light, front of the line, speeding into the intersection.

The brakes have been touchy lately, I mean, we go the car in 2005, a 1998 (or 99?) Chrysler Town & Country Mini Van - it had pretty new brakes on it then (within the last 6 months) and since then we have replaced the brakes 3 times, this time will be the fourth. In November, the ABS brake light came on. The weird thing was, when the light was on, the car drove completely normally. When the light was off, it would make a horrible grinding noise, vibrate the pedal...basically sounded terrifying. It would happen really sporatically though, and our mechanic checked it out, who we trust, and he said it was safe to drive, something about the ceramic brakes rubbing, idk - he said it was safe.

Well, like I said, today on the way to CHoP, they failed. I was pushing on the brakes so hard and nothing was happening. I might as well have had my foot on a brick wall, because it would have budged more. I did the right thing, tried pumping the brakes (frantically) and beeped my horn, hoping that the 6 oncoming lanes of cars would stop. Thankfully, there was nobody in front of me so I didn't rear end anyone, and even more thankfully the oncoming traffic did not hit us or anyone else. The car finally stopped. I limped it home from there never pushing 10 or 15 mph, and pulled over in a parking lot to call Sean & the Dr's office to cancel.

So, we are officially on a car hunt. I'm sick of fixing the brakes on this car, and even the day after having the brakes fixed - STILL not feeling like the car will stop appropriately. This car was just not made to stop I guess, because I know mine never wants to.

Thank you GOD that nothing more serious happened, and that we got home safely. I seriously want to get rid of this car, I think a really important feature of a car is the ability to STOP IT when you want to, ya know? So, that's definitely on the list of features we want in our next car.

Oy, I'm just on edge over the whole thing. I have a personal vendetta against that car now for screwing with me while my baby was in the car. Not cool.