He Blew the Whistle on DOGE. Then His Brakes Were Cut | Hacker News Reader

He Blew the Whistle on DOGE. Then His Brakes Were Cut

wired.com

97 pointsmalshe53 comments

This is odd since most cars require stepping down on the brake pedal to start the car. Even my UTV (side-by-side) requires this. I can't even remember the last vehicle I owned that did not require this. If my foot starts sinking down it will be obvious my brakes are failing. Cutting just enough into the last part of the brake line that is flexible hydraulic line to burst after a few miles would require quite some skill and a lot of practice. These lines have anywhere from 800 to 2000 pounds per square inch of pressure. Detailed high resolution pictures of the cut would be useful.

For what it's worth if you lose your brakes, downshift repeatedly until you are slow enough to find a softer landing zone. Rubbing tires up against the curb if there are no cars, bushes, rubbing up against the side of a hill, soft soil if available. If your car does not have an option to do this trade it in.

[Edit] I am not defending Elon or his orbiter zealots. Crazy evil stuff happens all the time but I think we are due some pictures and videos of the evidence. So far all we have is a story and things someone could have done to their own car. There are also a high prevalence of ring cameras that could capture his visitors. Cutting brake lines or wires of air bags is so oddly specific and prone to error that it could be an episode of Murder She Wrote about a botched assassination and the Sheriff is skeptical. Usually whistleblowers die from "self inflicted" GSW's to remove any loose ends or unknowns FWIW.

> and had the car seen by a mechanic who, according to the report, found “that the driver-side front impact/airbag sensor had also been removed but noted that the remaining wires had been spliced together, completing the circuit in a manner that prevented the vehicle from detecting or logging the missing component, while also preventing the vehicle from activating its safety protocols, alerting the driver, or engaging limp mode.

It’s quite obvious that this job was done by a professional if the allegations are true.

And I’m not personally about to doubt that our current government wouldn’t stoop to that level.

Are you just here to doubt the story?

No, I am skeptical without pictures and videos. I've also replaced a lot of brakes. A picture is worth a thousand words.

> a threatening note had been taped to his door, including photos of him walking his dog that appeared to have been taken by a drone

Nothing suspicious here

Now if only somebody involved in DOGE had all sorts of connections to people highly experienced with cars... maybe even by running a major carmaker himself?

I've never needed to press the brake pedal until my current car. Just the clutch pedal. It's my first automatic.

It also doesn't require a hard press, just enough,

I think it'd be fairly straight forward to damage the rubber hoses near the calipers so that failure was imminent but not immediate.

Many cars (especially ICE cars) may not have operational brake boost when you first get in to them — the vacuum that the power brakes rely on can easily be gone. So you step on the brakes without assist, then you start the engine, and then you have power brakes after a second or so.

I can easily imagine that stepping on a brake pedal with cut lines and no assist doesn’t feel that weird.

Also, plenty of people are not really tuned in to how their cars feel.

Many cars (especially ICE cars) may not have operational brake boost when you first get in to them

I warm up my engine, to the point of annoying armchair quarterbacks on HN. If my brake line was cut it would be very obvious within seconds. Exception would be a partial cut that leave a millimeter of line not cut but that would take some serious skill and practice.

Okay, good on you, but do you think every other person does this as well? I wasn't even aware warming up the engine would change my brakes until this thread. Honestly I thought the brake pedal was electronically connected to the actual brakes too so I didn't expect you could feel a cut line either.

You would absolutely notice if the system did not hold pressure. Normal "foot at rest to disable the interlock" pressure would result in pedal straight to floor.

I'm hoping I never run into this, but it's a little reassuring that it would be so stark at least.

Does his car even have an automatic transmission?

If you want to entertain yourself and you have a car that has a distinct start action (so a real ICE or some hybrids), you can do an easy experiment. Get in the car while it’s off. Press the brake pedal down, fairly firmly, release it, and repeat a few times. If there was residual vacuum while you got in, the first stroke or two will feel normal in the sense that the pedal will move fairly far down without too much effort, but then the pedal will require far more effort to depress farther as you run out of boost.

Now press the brake with moderate force, so it’s as far down as it goes easily in the no-boost state. Maintain that amount of force and start the car. (Do not do this experiment with the gas pedal! You are not trying to move the car!) You should hear the engine start and then, shortly thereafter, feel the pedal move farther down under the same amount of force. That’s the power brakes coming back online.

There’s no electronic magic here — the entire power brake system, on most cars, is entirely mechanical/hydraulic/pneumatic [0] with the possible exception of the antilock brakes and possible traction control. Neither of those will come into play when the car isn’t moving.

[0] Why pneumatic? Energy stored in a compressed or rarified fluid is proportional to the change in volume times the change in pressure. Hydraulics tolerate huge changes in pressure, but hydraulic fluids are highly incompressible, so the volume barely changes and the energy stored is tiny. Hydraulics can transport a lot of energy because then you have the pressure difference times the volume moved, but moving fluid from one cylinder to another does not change total volume. Gasses, on the other hand, allow huge volume changes. This is why it’s very safe to fill all the pipes in your house with water at 80 psi, but pipe manufacturers advise you very strongly not to fill the pipes with compressed air at pressures that high: you will store considerable energy in that air, and, if the pipe fails, it can release that energy rapidly.

Depending on the model it just requires activation of the brake light switch, which is a very light touch. And if it's an EV or PHEV with blended braking you're not pushing against the master cylinder anyway.

So what you're saying is, we need to abolish ICE and go electric?

I'm tempted to support this notion.

Removing the airbag impact sensor and then rewiring it to bypass the fault detection, without triggering the airbags, is also indicative of someone who has extensive experience in something no one should normally have experience in.

That's shitbox-101 level stuff (if you're in a dumb state where they'd rather you monkey with stuff to turn a dash light off than just rock the light).

I would like to know the history of this car. I'm not doubting the claims, but a plausible explanation is that he bought the car used, possibly with a salvage title, and the flipper he bought it from bypassed the blown airbag. Airbags are expensive, and it's not uncommon to just replace the steering wheel cover where it went off.

I've owned plenty of shitboxes and done my share of goofy fixes, but fucking around with integral safety equipment like airbag wiring is where I draw the line and get it fixed for real. It's one thing if it's only ever you in the car and you don't care about your own safety, but if other people are ever in the car they're going to rightfully expect you've at least got the safety equipment working to factory standard.

>I've owned plenty of shitboxes and done my share of goofy fixes, but fucking around with integral safety equipment like airbag wiring is where I draw the line and get it fixed for real. I

Everything is "integral safety equipment" if you screech enough. A lot of cars didn't even come with airbags.

The people who are relocating to DC to make "it's really about serving your country" money working for DOGE while getting reamed by the local COL don't care. They're gonna be there a few years. They just need the $1700 04 Camry they're about to be the 9th owner of to have A/C and get them to work long enough for them to buy something real. Seriously, the DC area is full of this kind of stuff.

While the brake situation in TFA is sus, the airbags not working seems like the sort of typical thing that gets lost when the 5th owner crashes it, has his sketchy mechanic patch it up that way, drives it for another year, he tells the 6th owner. The 6th owner blows the engine up, doesn't think that's worth mentioning when he sells it as parts. The 7th owner is a flipper who fixes it and has no reason to look. Etc, etc. That sort of non-obvious stuff gets lost.

> but if other people are ever in the car they're going to rightfully expect you've at least got the safety equipment working to factory standard.

These are the kinds of cars where the passengers expect nothing and are pleasantly surprised.

Would this be anything more than a 1k or 10k resistor across a pair of terminals to make the ECU think a sensor was connected when it wasn’t? All that would require is a wiring diagram and a resistor, along with access to the car.

I doubt the airbags deploy when the impact sensor is disconnected, that wouldn’t be a very good failure mode. Maybe Takata airbags did that? /joke

My 2017 RAV4 doesn't. I think "most" is an exaggeration

https://assets.sia.toyota.com/publications/en/om-s/OM42752U/...

p. 196, step 3: Firmly depress the brake pedal.

Yes, my riding lawnmower manual also tells me not to clear debris from the blade while the mower is running. Yet somehow I don't think the mower will stop if I do.

I don't know if this model has a brake interlock on the ignition or not, but the fact that it's part of the instructions for starting the vehicle doesn't imply the presence of one.

My 2006 Baja and 99 Acura Integra both don't have one. My 2024 Ioniq however will start in "accessory mode". There are plenty of cars on the road today that don't.

I'm into pedantry just as much as you. You can't start or move a car within the last 16 years without depressing the brake pedal. It is a federal regulation. Quantified, "plenty of cars" is not a number.

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-49/part-571/section-571.1...

https://www.nhtsa.gov/interpretations/alliance-114

I mean if we're being pedantic, unless there's something I missed the regulation you linked above only deals with shifting out of park, not starting the vehicle, but point taken, either Toyota has been flagrantly skirting regulations for a decade, or his car won't move without first depressing the brake (I don't think Toyota was making manual Rav4s that late, but haven't researched). I actually don't think my Accura will let me do it either (without putting a key in the bypass), but I'm not quite motivated enough to go out and check. My Baja is manual and would have no problem.

> Quantified, "plenty of cars" is not a number.

I mean did it need to be one? Unless you think I'm the only person whose managed to keep a car running over ~20 years the fact that we're around is enough to make it plausible we're talking a car predating them. But since your curious, it looks like ~40% of the cars on the road are from before 2010.

https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2024/02/average-age-of-cars-t...

My car doesn't require stepping on the brake to start but this car does sound like a newer one with weird "features" like that. I think the following car modifications indicate maliciousness and competency in the sabotage that could explain lack of alerting the driver,

>Since then, Berulis has laid low. He filed a police report, included in the suit and viewed by WIRED, and had the car seen by a mechanic who, according to the report, found “that the driver-side front impact/airbag sensor had also been removed but noted that the remaining wires had been spliced together, completing the circuit in a manner that prevented the vehicle from detecting or logging the missing component, while also preventing the vehicle from activating its safety protocols, alerting the driver, or engaging limp mode.” The police report also indicates that fingerprints had been found on Berulis’ car.

> newer one with weird "features" like that

Anything with push button start. It has been around a while.

Most car owners have never owned a car with a push button start.

You are right to be skeptical here. Brake lines are just rubber hydraulic lines and fail in "normal ways" frequently. Without ANY forensic details on "the cut" it is very likely coincidence going viral "because Elon"

How the actual fuck do you coincidentally end up with failing brakes right after a controversial social media post? The braking system is designed to be one of the most resilient systems in a vehicle. A coincident like that sounds a cosmic ray bitflip level of rare.

Among crashes where a "vehicle defect" is identified as the critical reason for a crash, brake problems account for 22% of them. It is a normal failure.

Both of these things can be true. Brakes can be the most resilient component in a car, but since they are so important, failure usually guarantees a crash.

It's nuanced. The brake system has several failure modes. Dual reservoir master cylinders would result in only half of the system to fail. You would absolutely be able to stop a car using only front or only rear brakes under normal conditions.

That is a very tiny percentage of overall crashes, it is not a normal failure.

It's painful to say it, but it's more likely that it's a false flag attack than a random fraying.

And now let's talk about the epidemic of cancer in the Trump administration....

> And now let's talk about the epidemic of cancer in the Trump administration....

Two out of a large administration, from a cohort especially prone to cancer diagnosis:

- Older (the baseline incidence rate for cancer in people over 60 is 1%)

- Selected for skepticism towards medical advice and guidelines

- Access to world-class health screening

Umm... I was going for conspiracy theorem style ranting. You're not supposed to take it seriously.

But you have to include gabbard's husband in this, so it's three in the last 6 months or so

I’ve owned at least a dozen cars, none have required the brake pedal press to start.

Pressing the clutch is a North American thing in my experience. All my other vehicles didn’t need it to start.

> I think we are due some pictures and videos of the evidence.

Yes, they should definitely prioritize posting pictures that only a fraction of a fraction of people will be able to understand or interpret at all, solely so that the people who want to pretend the accumulated things in the story didn't actually occur (or aren't that bad) can point to things they don't understand to naysay them. Brilliant.

You are probably in the top 1% of individuals by how perceptive you are about your car.

> most cars require stepping down on the brake pedal to start the car

I've never ever seen that but I also never drove an car with automatic transmission just manual, probably a thing there

This sounds more like 1970s TV drama than reality.

Cutting someone’s brake line has to be one of the least reliable ways to injure or kill them. If you cut my brake line, you might bust up my garage door or my neighbor’s yard, but they’re not going to fail on cue as I go around a mountain curve…(dramatic music)

As others have noted, this article seems light on details/hand-wavy to draw clicks. Vehicles have had dual-circuit brake systems since 1967 (mandated), so cutting one line wouldn't do the job, plus you'd be getting a light on the dash. The image in the article is of a stripped electric wire as though implying to the unfamiliar that this is a cut brake line.

https://archive.is/zY2Eb

That link it throwing me:

  "Scan this QR code with your mobile device to verify you are human. reCAPTCHA protects your privacy and does not share your details with this website or app."

Is that a new recaptcha thing? I've never seen that before.

Yeah there's been some debate about it in the news, because only a certified device can approve it, meaning this takes away any open-source platform to prove you're a human

Yeah, it's Google's second attempt at device attestation (ie. the widely panned web integrity tech they're trying to push through)

It's why I switched PortableApps.com to hCaptcha

It's pretty hard (probably nigh on impossible in the urban greater DC area) to make it out of your driveway/street without pressing the brake pedal enough to know you have an at least somewhat functional system.

The airbag system mods are pretty standard shitbox stuff. System goes off for whatever reason. Car is repaired. Sensors get tricked/fudged along the way because the owner doesn't want to put the money in (probably not worth it). Newer systems are more in depth and obnoxious to deal with so reading between the lines this is an older car which kinda also explains the brake thing.

Not that the government wouldn't do this but come on, they're not stealing your car to disassemble the front clip and monkey with the crash sensors and your brakes, they'll do something better than that.

I'd like to see _some_ evidence for this story.

Sounds all made up to try to scam Elon.

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