How about ABS (anti-lock) brakes, they are beginning to be perceved as neccessary saftey features (airbags too). How safe do we want our base model cars to be? Who decides? (the f%#@&*g lawyers?) I know how to pump my brakes in case of a skid, must I pay extra because alot of people don’t.
If you park on a steep driveway you sure need to use it.
Also, you can use the emergency brake when you can’t use the other ones. That was taught in driving education at high school. Maybe someone wasn’t there that day.
What Jaydabee said.
Almost touched on, but not quite:
In most states (at least the ones I’ve lived in), the DMV requires “two independent ways of applying brakes” for a car to be licensed.
OK for a manual, but you’re better off in Park for an automatic. (of course, use the P-brake either way)
The P-break should not be used to stop a car except in case of emergency. It appies only the rear brakes, a good recipie for spinning the car.
Well, not to contradict your mechanic, but I don’t think you need to pause in neutral first. If you just keep your foot on the brake while you set the parking brake (regardless of gear), you should be fine.
I go: foot on brake, shift to park, parking brake, remove foot
As long as the parking brake is on before you let the car roll that extra inch or so, you’re set.
How could you people overlook the parking brake’s primary use?!
I use it all the time to take sharp corners in the snow without slowing down too much. Just go in at the right angle, pull the handbrake and WHEEEEEE! slide around the corner. When it snows I take every corner like this.
Of course my handbrake only works on one wheel but it’s enough. Even if I don’t need to go fast I use it because it’s fun.
It’s also useful for doing 180’s (very difficult on dry pavement with a handbrake. A foot operated parking brake is great for this) and for spinning out of control in a parking lot. (The best time to go is when it snows after it hasn’t snowed for a while. then you get a nice layer of ice lubricated with a covering of snow.)
You should also throw out an anchor, in case it floods and your car is leakproof.
Ray (Sky anchors are more difficult to use.)
I was told the same as Tanstaafl when I bought my car. I don’t necessarily believe it, but what the heck. My car nudges forward slightly after I put on the parking brake and let my foot off the regular brake, so I put my car in neutral, set the brake, lift my foot, then go into park. IIRC, Click and Clack said this extra step was unecessary, but it’s my routine now.
For those of you who don’t set your brakes: my car was hit by someones car who never set his parking brake, in a relatively flat parking lot. He forgot this time to leave his car in gear, and it rolled into the side of mine at probably 5 MPH. I looked up as it was rolling away from my car, and went over to see what was happening. When I got close enough to see no one was in the car, I knew it must be rebounding from my car, and that I was done for. :mad: About $1500 in damage. Needless to say, his car was barely scratched. :rolleyes:
So use your brake!
It is too clear, and so it is hard to see.
Dunno. I only have done it in driveways and such when loading things I forgot into the hatch. Even if not illegal, it would seem a bit risky to leave the car unattended and running outside a 7-11!
–
peas on earth
Another use of the parking brake in an emergency:
Where I grew up, the cops had a sneaky trap. They’d wait at the top of a hill, just past the crest. After you get to the top, you’d accellerate if you forgot to let off the gas. Then you’d see the cop and pass him. Natural reflex is to hit the brake to get back under the speed limit. The cops would use your brake lights as a signal to radar you then go pull you over.
When I saw the cops, I’d take my foot off the gas and lightly pull up on the “emergency” brake. I’d be below the speed limit before the cops, without my brakelights as a signal, could get a high speed reading on me. 
Wrong thinking is punished, right thinking is just as swiftly rewarded. You’ll find it an effective combination.
Emergency brake, parking brake, who cares what it’s called? I have used it as both.
When a brakeline rusted through on my now deceased 1970 VW, I was very quick to grab a handful of E-brake to prevent me from parking in the trunk of the ford in front of me! I had to sit for a half hour at the side of the road, till I could stop shaking enough to drive the rest of the way home(on back roads, very slowly!).
When parking the car, set the parking brake(same thing as above) to prevent some dolt from knocking your car into another car. This can be done with a stick shift vehicle that is left in gear without the parking brake applied.
An automatic transmission is another story altogether! The “park” position on the gear selector engages the reverse and second geartrains simultaneously to lock the transmission. If some dolt hits the front or back of the car while parked, your transmission is going to suffer damage(usually terminal). The parking brake will help prevent the damage by limiting the travel of the vehicle when hit.
In northern climates, some folks do not use their parking brake in the winter for the simple reason that it freezes and prevents the wheels from turning even when the lever is released inside the car. I once drove a Chevy Citation three blocks with the back wheels not turning. Heck of a strain on the engine, not to mention all the rest of the geartrain. BTW, I finally hit a bump that knocked loose the frozen brakes, and I continued on my way.
In short, it’s a good idea to “set” the parking brake whenever possible, and to remember it’s there in a real dire emergency.
FixedBack
“When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven’t got any.”~~*G.K.Chesterton 1908 *
In one car, probally 80 omni 024, in the service manual it refered to the cable brake as a emergency brake for the auto-trans model and a parking brake for the manual model (or is it the other way around).
which would seem to make sense since putting the car into park would lock the wheels on a AT.
Also I use to always use mine which caused it to lock when it got very cold. I finally broke the habit when the cable wore and it would lock in normal temps, now I just put it in park.
So who are you going to beleive? The experts in Los Angeles, where the automobile is king and no one leaves the house on foot, or the drivers in your new town, where I imagine pedestrians are common?
I always put the car in neutral, put on the parking brake, and put the car back in gear (I have manual transmission.) Would anyone like to second (or contradict) Hunsecker’s claim that what I’m doing is unnecessary? H. says
“…Well, not to contradict your mechanic, but I don’t think you
need to pause in neutral first.”
Dunno about your setup specificially but every one i have seen goes to neutral first anyway. Like this: 1, N, 2, N, 3, N, etc.
Well, I was speaking just about automatic transmissions. Its my understanding that as long as you don’t let the car lurch that extra bit once you’ve put it in park and let off the brake, you’re fine. Once the car rolled that extra inch or so, the stress of keeping the car in place is being taken by the trans. and the parking brake isn’t relieving that stress any.
Now, I very well could be wrong, but this is what I’ve been told, and it makes sense to me.
This happened in a 1965 Mercury Colony Park station wagon, which happened to be the vehichle I drove in high school (no, I didn’t go to high school THAT long ago; the car was nearly as old as I was). I don’t know if the current system of emergency/parking brakes works the same way or not.
However: the advantage of the E/PB in that particular car was that, one time when a hole developed in my brake line and most of the brake fluid leaked out, which I did not know until I was accelerating down a hill towards a stop sign and a busy street with the brake pedal pressed firmly against the floor, the E/PB used an entirely different system and therefore still worked even though the hydraulic brakes were out of commission.
The disadvantage, of course, is that the E/PB on that particular car was a) under the dash; b) had a rachet release handle which was also (in)conveniently located underneath the dash; c) had a travel of about two clicks of the ratchet from fully off to fully on.
But, yeah, it worked.
For what it’s worth: I’ve always set the parking brake on my car; I don’t think anyone else in my family did, though, unless they had a specific reason for doing so (and usually not then).
Well, obviously I am in the Los Angeles camp. I could rant and rave and share some more details of the insane and ignorant habits that the drivers in this new town I live in. Their incompetence is boundless, and their opinions on most driving issues have little credibility with me. So, no, I was never swayed in my belief that using the parking/emergency brake was a good idea.
However, I realize that I am not aware of the driving habits of all of North America. So I wondered if perhaps Los Angeles was uncommon in it’s use of emergency brakes. I am happy to see that most people on this board have some modicum of sense on this matter.
Just a note: ABS’s are not being implemented in order to avoid law-suits (unlike, say, airbags and hand-brakes (see how I neatly side-stepped the name issue?? 
)). ABS’s are being installed by manufacturers because they perceive the customers want the technology (theoretically making the car safer).
Interestingly, the data insurance companies are collecting indicate, at least preliminarily, that ABS’s don’t reduce accident rates. Some of the data I saw showed increased accident rates at first. The theory I read at the time was that drivers who had learned to pump the brakes when stopping had trouble with ABS’s because the systems were less-efficient when both the system AND the driver were attempting to do the same thing. It was only idiots like me who lock the brakes (hey, I didn’t grow up in freezing or wet weather, what can I say?) for whom ABS’s provide really significant advantages in stopping distance and control.
As to the parking-brake (my Taurus uses a foot pedal; so much for my clever attempt at circumlocution!), I set it all the time. Here in Ohio, that earns me considerable contempt… but then again, no one around here seems to understand the use of turn indicator lights either.
I live in the UK, and the device discussed here is used to stop your car rolling away when parked, and for splendid hand-brake turns in hopefully deserted car parks.
A much more important issue, however, is that of fog lights. Here at least the type of driver who enhances their car with furry dice and go faster stripes drives around with no headlights on, and fog lights blazing.
To head off one possible source of dissention, these are not ‘driving lights’, they are called fog lights in car manuals and on the spares boxes.
Is this a common irritation, or do you now think I am wierd?
Russell
RussellM:
A recent poll by AAA (not sure what your UK equiv. is) showed that innappropriate fog light use was way up there on the list of annoying driving practices. It might even have been first.
Back to topic, sort of:
This doesn’t resolve the P-brake vs. E-brake issue, but… a private pilot acquaintance was taught by his instructor how to steer that poor little Cessna with the doors. Even if the thing is supposed to be called a Parking Brake, don’t rule anything out in an emergency.
Any opinions on the silliness of steering a 152 with the doors? It works, but just barely, and your hair isn’t worth a damn for the rest of the week.
Jinx notes:
a) I knew a man who owned a Model “T”. The brake foot pedal engaged the back brakes, and the emeregncy brake engaged the front set.
b) As an emergency feature, I really wonder how those with a foot pedal for the emergency brake can pump that brake w/release in hand while attempting to steer. Anyway, that’s what driver’s ed taught in case of brake failure! Quite tricky a feat!