Why airbrakes?

Air Brakes, when you drive off a bridge, or cliff in the mountains, and hope your air tanks are full of air to stop you before the loud sound of breaking glass, and the smell of s--t.

 

Not only because of the saftey issues that everyone has stated, but you have to remember that a truck and trailer has 10 brakes vs four.
The air system is much more reliable in distributing air to the whole system than a hydraulic system would ever be.
Plus in an air system, if you have one weak link, the air system has a better ratio of compensation.
In a hydraulic system a weak link could very easily throw your four wheeler into a spin.

 

Not true. Most modern cars use a two channel system, diagonal corners iirc.


But considering how most people maintain their cars they'd probably lose both channels before they noticed.

 

Front/Rear, not diagonally.

 

Yeah need less power to rear brakes and more up front due to weight distribution and weight transfer in a car or light truck. Imagine how horrible it'd be if cars were split diagonally. Lose half the system, step on the brakes and get thrown into oncoming traffic/ditch?

 

I guess that makes sense.
Lesson learned.

 

They make cars with air brakes and I'm opening up a tire shop think of all the flat spotted tires you'll see on cars.

 

Biggest reason is that air was the first practical way to do it, they tried vacuum and it didn't work (remember vacuum is what powers the power brakes in your car) air brakes allowed easy and (mostly ) foolproof hook up and after a few years worked to an industry wide standard which allows backward compatibility so that a 2017 tractor could pull a 1936 trailer. I think some of the big wiggle wagon haulers may be doing this now to look at their trailers. This standard is so entrenched that the financial cost of change is just too high, so air continues to evolve. This being said all the previous posts are also accurate too

 

Airbrakes has more power and way more safer around people, and also highway's. Hydraulic are not safe to use at all. I heard they fail to stop and crash.

 

Hydraulic liquid would flare and burn at the temperatures we run downgrade at. Literally poof. No more fluid no more braking, truck goes buh bye faster.