general problems of the 2006 Mercury Mariner Hybrid

When slowing for a stop sign on a suburban street, the vehicle lost all braking power. (it had shown no prior problems. ) we had the vehicle checked - both front hydraulic lines had broken.

I put my 2006 Mercury Mariner Hybrid into reverse to back out of my drive way. I applied a little gas and began rolling down the incline towards the street. As I approached the street I put on my brakes, but nothing happened and I failed to slow down. A code displayed on my dash reading, "regen brakes" the last word was either failure or disabled. I can't remember because I was in a panic about my brakes not working with my family in the car. I applied the brakes again. The brake pedal was hard to push and though I tried with all my strength, it did not stop the car. My husband then pulled the parking brake from the passenger seat. I turned the car off to collect myself, hoping the failure was some weird fluke, and turned the car back on. It immediately did the same failure. At this point, I put the car in park and my husband offered to drive it around the block and back into the garage. It never showed another code afterwards. We left the car for a few hours and then cautiously drove it to the gas station. No more codes or issues. However, we no longer feel we can safely drive the car as we have no idea when the brakes could go out again. Next time we may not be so fortunate as to be on a residential street with no other traffic.

The warning lights had come on a few days ago stating to check the brakes. Today, when the engine was started, the message stop safely now came on. This does not tell me anything about what I need to do and how critical this error is. Can I drive it to the repair shop or should I have it towed? what has to be replaced? this car is driven by my son who is an inexperienced driver, so this is a major concern.

Was slowing to make a turn and the anti-lock/skid kicked in on dry pavement. Continued to occur through day with service brake warning and service 4x4 warning coming on. Brakes were replaced, rotors turned & system bled. Al/s stick kicks in while going slow on occasion. It's like the brakes lock-up and release three or four times then everything is normal until the next time. Vehicle is a 2006 Mercury Mariner Hybrid with 36900 miles. Hpa pump was replaced last year under warranty.

With the recent announcement of a software glitch on the fusion and milan hybrids, I have had similar occurrences on my 2006 Mercury hybrid, where it felt like I was trying to stop on wet leaves. It seemed like braking was fine initially, then it faded (as I described above) but with more pressure on the pedal, it did return to "normal" braking. This has happened only about 3 or 4 times of the 3 years of ownership, and I have not taken it to a dealer. I initially thought it was due to wet brakes, and thought nothing further of it. But given the recent recall by Ford, I thought it was necessary to at least report the occurrences. Date indicated is an approximation of one of the occurrences, which was just after I had surgery.