Bear Grylls is an idiot

So I come home and caught that new show of his. The first bit is what to do if you lose your brakes in a car on a steep hill.

This doofus says you can only use your emergency brake or trans within 20 MPH. If you miss that window, he then tells you to call the police...while you are barreling down a hill, he tells you to get on the phone.

No mention of just turning the car off, downshifting into a lower gear at higher speed. Just bunch of crap about using your adrenaline,

This is exactly the kind of crap that makes me afriad of Prius owners. Not the cars, the owners.

haha amen

i drove my truck home 2 hours with no brakes once. downshifting a running auto with foot off gas will damn near stop you. not quickly, but you can do it.

running away down a hill - toss it in reverse and kiss the transmission goodbye, but save your life. think they did that on mythbusters - throwing into park just wiped out the parking pawl and didnt stop the car but slamming into reverse locked up the rear wheels and stopped the car.

up here in the super rust belt most of our e-brake cables are frozen solid or rusted in half so that's not an option.

Yeah, that kind of automotive non-knowledge hurts lots of folks.
I was using an old Ford cube van once. I had the box lightly loaded and a few miles into my journey a brake line broke. I stopped at a gas station and picked up a big bottle of brake fluid. I used the trans to bring me down to a crawl almost every time then pumped the brakes to stop. Every now and then I'd get out and fill the M/C.
I should send an e-mail to the producers. Do you know how many people are part of producing a TV show? How is it that NONE of them had that basic common sense? I guess my dad was right when he said "Common sense is anything but common."

Sounds like last year's BABE rally where both our team cars blew the rear brake lines on day 1. We crimped them off with vice grips and nursed them the way to the night 1 stop until the next morning when we could get parts to repair things.

Hah-In high school I swapped rear axles to get limited slip on my first gen 7. Problem is the threads didn't match on the body brake line to the axle brake line. It was midnight and I needed to drive the car to school/work/party the next day, so I cut the line from the old axle, put a tiny circular piece of rubber in the junction and bolted it closed. Limited slip and no rear brakes? Oh yeah!

Drove it that way for weeks.

Mental wrote: This is exactly the kind of crap that makes me afriad of Prius owners. Not the cars, the owners.

Yeah I agree. just yesterday my old van decided to pull a toyota and the throttle stuck. happens alot after it sits for more than a couple days, i have to kick the pedal to break it free then all is fine, only this time it stuck down and i took off. half a second later i was in neutral and stopped. I never even broke the speed limit. So in other words, all of those tragic toyota crashes were people with malfunctioning cars who also didn't know to shift into neutral.

I saw the berkleying preview for that show and started throwing E36 M3 at the TV! What an idiotic show and I really hope nobody dies following that asshats advice!!!

You should see his idiotic "advice" about how to survive in the wild.

I only watch his survival show to see him eat bugs.

You guys still watch TV?

chain link fence and heavy vegetation, including small trees work great to stop an old jaguar when the brake line to the master blows out and dents the hood from the inside....

dont ask me how i know...

I guess he's an idiot about driving like most of us are idiots about surviving in the wilderness. Sounds like somebody needs to give him a "don't try this at home" warning

Rufledt wrote: all of those tragic toyota crashes were people with malfunctioning cars who also didn't know to shift into neutral.

jebus...seriously? We are not going to start this again are we?

First time I saw him on his "survival" show, I laughed for the whole hour. It was the worst piece of staged bullE36 M3 I had ever seen.

"I'll just float down this river, because it will be faster. Here, let me go off camera and stuff a lifejacket on under my shirt so I can bob down the river like a bloody balloon."

Jay wrote: I only watch his survival show to see him eat bugs.

And watch him drink his own urnine (wtf?!)

I'm soooo glad I didn't bother watching....

How's about just yanking the ebrake hard enough to lock the rear wheels vs trying to slow yourself with it?

That guy is an a$$hat.

i remember one time he was in the desert and he squeezed the moisture out of zebra e36 m3 for water to drink.

nderwater wrote:

Jay wrote: I only watch his survival show to see him eat bugs.

And watch him drink his own urnine (wtf?!)

"No, but I do it anyway because it's sterile and I like the taste. "

Asking a survival expert how to drive a car is like, well.. you know, asking a fine arts museum curator to inventory your pile of old car parts.. futile.

I wonder what Click and Clack would have to say about it.

Les Stroud should best him at this genera too.

Later in this same episode, after driving the car down the hill, he showed how to survive if you're ever locked in a cold storage warehouse. Yeah, like I'm worried about that happening.

I saw that episode and here are my gripes. First, as everyone else said, downshift and pull the e-brake. Try it at speed, you won't lock up the rear wheels unless you're a shiny happy person. Next, look next to the road, there's a steep hill down, but then theres a steep hill up. Uhh, try turning uphill? After that, grinding into a guard rail. Not a terrible idea, but it should be coupled with other methods for slowing down. Lastly, driving off road into a tree, bad idea. Terrible idea. A tree will stop you now, it won't decelerate you smoothly. At least he wore safety glasses......

Brotus7 wrote: After that, grinding into a guard rail... driving off road into a tree

Been there, done both.

Not highly recommended.