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One of the most important factors to the safety of any car’s passenger is the brakes. There is a question that always surfaces when talking about car brakes. How often do I change my brakes, and how do I know that I really need a brake job on my car. Hence, if you were to leave this article with one piece of information, it is that you should never fall for the misleading advertisement that sets a fixed price for brake jobs, simply because these ads promote the lowest price a shop can accomplish the job at. In order to perform a diagnosis to determine if you need a brake job or not, you need to look for braking problems such as vibration, grabbing, and pulling. You also need to watch for low or soft pedal, and abnormal noises. First and foremost, you should be aware that there is no set mileage interval that suggests the necessity of new brake pads. It is also difficult to predetermine the odometer reading at which the brakes need to be relined. This is due to the fact that wear on the brake pads depend on various factors, most importantly the braking habits of the driver. Furthermore, the braking systems are designed differently on each car, which also plays a big role in the uncertainty of brake change intervals. I have personally seen a set of identical brake pads being installed on 2 identical cars, one which lasted for 50,000 miles, and the other lasted 70,000. When interviewing the drivers of both cars, the 70,000 was mostly highway driving, and the 40,000 was driven mostly in stop-and-go city traffic. But the general rule of thumb is that, the front brakes wear out faster than the rear brakes because the front pads handle a higher percentage of the breaking load.