A red brake warning lamp stays lit after the engine starts and the parking brake has been fully released. What should the driver do?

Why C is correct

Very few warning lights are less appropriate to ignore than this one. With the parking brake fully released, an illuminated brake lamp generally means one of two things: fluid has fallen below a safe level, or pressure differs between the two circuits. Either condition can leave the driver with half a brake system or none at precisely the moment it is needed, and neither improves with distance covered. Have the vehicle recovered rather than driven. Pumping may reseat a float sensor temporarily while doing nothing whatsoever about the leak responsible.

Why the other options are wrong

A. Drive cautiously as far as the nearest motorway services

Driving on to the next stop presumes remaining braking capacity survives the journey. The warning is there because nobody can safely assume that it will.

B. Clear the lamp by pumping the pedal several times

Pumping can extinguish the light without touching the underlying fault. A dark lamp over the same leak leaves the driver in a worse position than a lit one.

D. Continue driving; those lamps often stick in cold weather

Assuming a stuck lamp is how drivers discover at the bottom of a long hill that they were right about the weather and wrong about the brakes. The default reading of this lamp is that it is telling the truth.

On the road

A driver notices the lamp on Monday, plans to mention it at the weekend, and does not get there. Somebody stops suddenly on an off-ramp, and pedal travel turns out to be considerably longer than it used to be. The lamp had been telling the truth for five days. Of every warning light fitted to a car, this is the one least worth deferring.

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