Safe driving and emergencies
You have just driven through water and your brakes are wet. How does the handbook tell you to dry them?
- Press the gas and brake pedals lightly at the same time until the brakes dry. Correct answer
- Use the emergency brake for a while as you drive.
- Pump the brakes hard several times at full speed.
Why
Wet brakes have a simple fix: press lightly on the accelerator and the brake at the same time, and keep it up only until they are dry. After you make it through water on a flooded road, test the brakes to be sure they work properly before you rely on them. The emergency brake appears in the handbook as a last step when the brake pedal sinks to the floor, after pumping and shifting down, not as a way to dry anything. Pumping shows up in the handbook only for a skid in a car without ABS or a pedal that sinks to the floor, never as a way to dry wet brakes. Driving into flood water is a risk of its own, since you cannot judge its depth by looking, and another route is the better choice.
Where this comes from
California Driver's Handbook, June 2025 edition. The correct answer is Press the gas and brake pedals lightly at the same time until the brakes dry.
The rule behind this one
Safe driving and emergencies in California goes through the whole topic, with the page of the California Driver's Handbook behind every rule.
More on safe driving and emergencies
- On a cold, wet day, which part of the road tends to freeze before the rest?
- A patrol car ahead turns on its emergency lights and starts weaving slowly across all the lanes. What should you do?
- Your 6-year-old normally rides in a child passenger restraint system in the back seat. In which situation may the child ride in front, still in that restraint system?
- Your car runs out of gas on a freeway during the morning commute, in an area covered by the CHP Freeway Service Patrol (FSP). What can FSP do for you?