The article says, in part: "Diehl felt lucky to be moving slowly in town when the fire started. She knows enough about alternators to understand steering and brakes can become affected when it suddenly stops working." That's news to me. I've never heard of steering and brakes suddenly quitting when an alternator goes out. The battery runs low, the wipers gradually slow down, the lights slowly dim, and if the driver is too oblivious to notice all of this, finally the engine quits for lack of spark. Sometimes it takes several hours of driving to reach the end point (no spark).