Button, button…who’s got the button?
Every now and then something may go wrong with your vehicle that requires a quick response from you; the driver. This may include using your parking brake to stop your vehicle if your brakes fail or having to hit your brake pedal hard and stop suddenly in an emergency. Another problem that can happen is when your vehicle stalls while you’re making a turn or any time you ease off the gas pedal; perhaps because of a need of a tune up or because of weak fuel in the fuel system. Would you know what to do if that happened to you?
When I was a teen my dad had a vehicle that would stall if you took a curve or corner a bit too fast or too sharply. I wasn’t really sure why that happened, but I was pretty good at re-starting the engine while the vehicle was in motion. I barely lost any speed or momentum from the turn while I did my thing inside the vehicle.
Typically you would shift the gear selector into neutral, re-start the engine by turning the key, and then once the engine has re-started, select drive once again before applying more gas. Since the vehicle can re-start when the gear selector is in park or neutral, you should use neutral so the vehicle doesn’t need to stop. But there is a problem with some of today’s vehicles. The automakers have started to make vehicles that use a button to start the vehicle instead of a key. That may seem to be a simple solution to using a key, but it becomes more difficult to start a stalled engine.
With a button start system, you need to have your foot on the brake to re-start the engine. Not just touching the brake, but actually stopped. This makes re-starting the stalled engine a little more complicated compared to a key system.
If your vehicle stalls while making a turn; since you had to come off the gas to make the turn the first thing to do is stay away from the brake so you can complete your turn. Braking without engine power could very easily cause your vehicle to stop before you’re able to exit the intersection. That would put you, your vehicle and your passengers at high risk.
However, since you can’t just slip the vehicle into neutral and re-start the engine with a button start like you can with a key start, you’ll need to ease over to the side of the road and re-start the engine after stopping first. This will take a little longer to re-start the engine compared to a key system, but it will allow you to do it safely.