You’ve got me embarrassed now for revealing that , but it’s true.The teacher’s reasoning was that you can brake faster with your left foot. I’ve driven that way for close to 30 years now , and AFAIK it hasn’t caused any problems.To change now would be like trying to write with my left hand.
You’ve got nothing to be embarrassed about. Braking with the left foot on an auto is preferable because you will have better response times by anticipating a potential braking situation coming up. The only problem with left foot braking is that the clueless masses tend to “ride” the brake leaving the brake lights on constantly. Not to mention the additional wear to the brakes.
If you have the presence of mind to keep your foot off the brake pedal when not braking, left foot braking is a good thing.
Push button transmissions, oil heaters, split sliding rear windows and numerous other innovations permeated the car industry, some just cause they were ‘cool’ or neat. Not much concern was given to safety, or to ergonomics, and if it was, it was mostly misunderstood, so all sorts of interesting things went on in cars.
So how did a push button tranny in the center of the steering wheel work anyway???
As an interesting aside, every bus I’ve driven has floor mounted turn signals as well as floor mounted bright switches. The intention is probably to keep both hands free while driving, which is sometimes very necessary.
I owned a 1959 Plymouth Savoy (my first car!) with a push button transmission, mounted on the dash, to the left of the steering column. It was vertical, starting with P at the top, down to L on the bottom.( I guess like todays automatics, Park, Rev., Drive and Low) I was reading on a Plymouth website, that, the Chrysler Corp. was the only company that had success with it, since it was the only one of its kind that was mechanically controlled. I remember it being a little hard to engage each gear, when you pushed a button, it was a good one inch in travel before you were engaged. There was a resounding ‘click’. Think of the click on todays automatics…same thing.