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Brake Preservation Plans For The Highway Commuters

6 November 2014 by Herman Mills

Preserving your brakes is not easy when you commute daily to work on a congested highway. The constant starting and stopping causes wear and tear, necessitating costly brake repairs. For those who wish to extend the life of their brakes, the following preservation steps are recommended.

Avoid the Heavy Traffic Hours

Traffic gets really heavy around 7:30 A.M. The commute takes you 90 minutes. Since you do not have to be in work until 10 A.M., you leave every morning at 8:30. Why not leave work at 7 A.M. or 6:30 A.M.? Rather than go straight to the office, go to a coffee shop and get some work done there early in the morning. Perhaps you could even hit the gym for a workout. 

This strategy helps you avoid gridlock, which not only ruins your brakes, but also makes you far less productive. What really can you do sitting in traffic for an hour and a half?

Take Advantage of Cruise Control

Cruise control is a favorite those who wish to control control speed to conserve fuel and avoid traffic citations. Cruise control does provide a way to save your brakes.

When all is clear on the highway during the earlier (or later) time of the day you leave, take advantage of the cruise control feature. This way, the car travels at a steady pace and you resist the subconscious urge to hit the brakes or slightly speed. The less you engage the brakes unnecessarily, the more life you get out of them.

Find an Alternative Route with Few Lights

Why take the highway?

Granted, exiting gridlocked highway traffic for city streets with red light after red light is not much of an improvement. Is there a route where you hit a few lights and then travel several miles or so on a stretch of highway before once again hitting street lights? The route might not be the fastest one, but at least a portion of the route takes strain off your brakes.

Take Public Transportation

One of the best ways to preserve your brakes is to just not use the car. Public transportation might not be convenient all the time. Who said you had to take public transportation every day? Taking a bus or subway once or twice a week could be more than enough to buy the brakes several more years of life. Actually, doing so reduces wear and tear on all the vehicle's parts.

Even with all the care in the world, you'll still need to replace your brakes at some point. When that happens, work with a professional shop such as Care Muffler & Brake Shop.

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