How should one deal with brake failure?

I lost the brakes on a 1973 Nova I had.

I was going along and everyone had stopped up ahead (couple hundred feet) for a red light (around 15 cars ahead of me). I hit the brakes and nothing. I had no pedal, right to the floor.

Now that couple hundred feet had gone down to tens of feet and I was about to rear end the person in front of me.

I couldnt go around them to the left cause it was a two lane street with on coming traffic.

I couldnt go around to the right ...were parked cars in front of houses that had driveways.


So rather then rear end someone ...and deal with everything that comes with that, I yanked that wheel to the right and squeezed the car on an angle in between two of the parked cars and smashed into like a 7" tall curb BABOOM!!! like i was off-roading.

the thing goes flying up the curb, grounding out the back end and it took so much of my momentum that the e-brake did the rest and i stopped half way in some guys driveway and on his grass.

i fully expected to hit a car, a mailbox a fence or a house. But whatever I hit it woulda been 10x better than hitting someone in the back at a red light. Law suit, injury, insurance hikes, points, ect ect ect. Hitting someones garden gnome is not so bad.

This was all at approx 20 mph.

If i was driving this truck and there was no stuntman to get in front of me and stop me from being a runaway truck
I would have down shifted as much as possible ... repairs cost omney but flyign off a mountain at 40 mph is more expensive.
jammed the e-brake and hoped it did something and then

either A) looked for a spot to run off like the first guy did when the truck was beeping
B) put it into the wall (the high side of the mountain)