Safe Luxury - Can brakes suddenly fail on a modern Mercedes? Aren't there too many fail safes built in?

Can brakes suddenly fail on a modern Mercedes? Aren't there too many fail safes built in?

Someone told me that the brakes "failed" on his 2003 E320. No idiot light warning, no other warning. I thought that modern upscale cars had fail safes means that would, at least, give some braking power.

Public Comments

Anything can have its brakes fail including the top best things and everything can fail. =/
can be driving, brake pads fall off, brake shoes springs fall, end with no brakes, that's why you have a split master cylinder
If something can suddenly fail on a space shuttle (with a lot more safes built in) why not on a car?
It can happen on any vehicle. But even if you have hydraulic failure, you can still use the brakes...you just don't have the brake booster assisting you. Assuming you have a worst case scenario and have a burst brake line and you loose all your brake fluid, you still have the emergency/parking brake as a back-up. On this car, the '03 E320, what may have happened is a failure of the SBC pump. They have been known to fail on the early W211 chassis but they will usually trigger the brake warning lamp to show that the pump's threshold has been reached.