I live in an area with a lot of hills. I always use the parking brake, even when parking on the flat. It’s a good habit - since I do it every time, I don’t ever make the mistake of not doing it. I certainly wouldn’t rely on the “park” position of the transmission to hold the car on any kind of hill. The parking brake will hold the car even on steep hills, while the parking pawls may not.
There’s another thing to consider here: what do you do in an emergency like this? In her case, Alice would probably have been better off just to let the car roll. It would eventually hit something and cause some damage (which it did, anyway), but at least she wouldn’t have endangered herself. She had very little time to decide what to do, and under some circumstances it would be better to try to stop the car (e.g. it’s rolling toward a group of pedestrians).
…its not a matter of lecturing and it isn’t a matter of “not having sympathy.” In many parts of the world putting the hand brake on is just part of the process and the thought that you would park the car without applying it is literally unthinkable. We are taught this by our driving instructors. It is part of our road code. So a thread like this: where the non-application of the hand brake is treated as normal by most of the posters here, can be puzzling.
There is nothing wrong with asking “Is it not a thing in America to use your parking brake?” and there is no better thread to ask that question than this particular one. Rather than treat the question as an “attempt to shame”, why don’t you just treat it as the question that it is?
Oh too scary and this hits close to home for me. My driveway is very steep too, but I still walk to get the mail rather than park at the top to grab it on my way in or out. There would not be much to stop my car going off a 3 foot hill and I’d probably be caught by the open door on it’s way.
This happened five years ago in the middle of winter. My daily driver was a Jeep Wrangler w/ 5 speed manual transmission.
It was early in the morning and I was getting ready for work. At 6:00 AM I went out to the driveway, started the Jeep to warm it up, then went back inside the house to eat breakfast and whatnot.
At 6:30 I walked out of the house to go to work. I walked to the driveway, and… no Jeep. The Jeep was simply not there. It vanished.
So I was standing there, dumbfounded, trying to figure out what happened and what I was going to do. I could only assume someone walked up our (very long) driveway, noticed the Jeep was running, and stole it.
After standing there for a good 60 seconds, I heard a faint sound in the distance. It sounded like a running engine. So I walked around in the dark, trying to pinpoint where the sound was coming from. It seemed to be coming from the creek in the woods.
I walked down to the woods, toward the sound of the running engine. Though it was pitch black out, I could see… it was my Jeep. :smack:
The Jeep had apparently rolled down across the front lawn and into the woods after I started it earlier. It stopped when it hit a small tree. Good thing the tree was there, else it would have plopped down into the creek.
Apparently not, quite a few of the people I drove around had the same opinion as kayT re. my insistence on Using The Damn Brake; it was particularly… poignant… when the car in question happened to be a manual :smack:. Shrug. I bloody well still Use The Damn Brake as well as leave the car in P, if it’s automatic. I’d rather use one safety measure too many than one too little.
That’s what I call being really, really, really close!
I’ve had this happen a few times to me. I drive a manual and from time to time get out of the car and have forgotten to set the parking brake. I used to own property in West Virginia, on a hill, and I remember one time getting out of the car to move something, and the car started to roll backwards. I’m glad I was able to get in and stop my car or it would have gone down the hill and most likely been totaled.
I don’t remember if we were taught to set the parking brake when I was taking lessons. The vast majority of cars here are automatics, and many of the parking brakes are near the foot. I don’t like those and don’t use them. I do however tend to set the hand brake ones when I drive them, but that’s out of habit more then anything else.
We lived on a corner when I was a kid and the road on the side was sloped - enough that when it snowed over, it was great for sledding. One day we heard a loud thud/crash outside. The girl who lived across the street and uphill from us was playing in the family car and she managed to release the brake (dunno if the car was automatic or not) and she rolled down and crashed into the car parked beside our house. Minor damage (cars were tough in the 60!!) and the girl was fine, if shaken. I don’t think she played in the car after that.
As for the OP, I’ve done a related dumb thing. I’ve parked and left the car in drive. Then I couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t start for me when I came back. :smack:
There is, in many AT cars. They’ll lock the doors automatically when you start moving and only automatically unlock the doors when you put it in Park (in some you also have to shut the engine off and take they keys out). You can always unlock the doors manually of course, but if you just try to pull the open handle and the door is still locked, that’s a reminder that the car is not in the proper configuration to be exited.
Another thing about the parking brake: I grew up and learned to drive in the mountains and snow. You set your parking brake when you park, and the next day it is frozen in that position and you ain’t goin’ nowhere till you break out the heat gun.
Another reason I always use the parking brake is that I learned to drive on a manual transmission. When there’s no such thing as park, you use the parking brake.
How many of the non-parking-brake people here live in flat places? There’s not much point in setting the brake in, say, most of Miami.
Many years ago I stopped at a Radio Shack for something. I was in the store about 5 minutes when someone came in and asked if anyone owned a blue Mercury. I looked out and my car was sitting in the middle of a 6 lane highway. The car has slipped out of park and into reverse then rolled down the parking lot into the road. A few months later got a recall notice from Ford, this was a known problem with these cars. The fix was a sticker one was suppose to apply to the dash that stated to engage the parking brake whenever the vehicle was placed in park.
I almost always use the park brake & I have never had that problem here in the Colorado Rockies. I have only lived here for 25 years. I lived in the Sierra Nevada mountains for four years while I was growing up. Again, I have never experienced this. YMMV, of course.
As a mechanic, I have only seen this once. A fellow drove across a small stream 1/4 mile from his house. He then parked his Jeep in his driveway with the park brake on. In the morning his Jeep would not budge! He called us to come get it & fix it. I towed it with a wrecker on wheel dollys to our heated shop. There I backed it into a bay & left it overnight. The next morning all was well. We could not find the problem. When I called him & questioned him about what he had done differently than he usually did, he told me the story.
After that he parked it in his heated garage & used wheel chocks instead of his park brake. I guess that he was a tad gun shy about this happening again. Heck, if he had driven it a few miles before parking it with the park brake on, he would never have had a problem. He just needed to sling all of that water out of his drum brakes. No water, no ice.
Hey, I did the same thing too - on my driving test! There was a line for the test, and you had to drive up when it was your turn and wait for the instructor to get in. Imagine my surprise when he told me to start the car, and it wouldn’t start. I told him the car wouldn’t start, but he just kept staring at me until I finally figured it out. Fortunately it was only a 3-point penalty, and I passed the test. Haven’t made that mistake again since, either.
Geez, glad you’re okay Alice.
I learned about the parking brake. Thanks giys I’ll be using it from now on.
My close call with a car…I was talking to a friend while she sat in her car, a large SUV, in a parking lot. The engine was running but the it was in park. The driver side door was open and I was standing inside the door next to the driver seat having a conversation when someone started backing out of a space that my friend’s SUV was partially blocking. Without a second thought my friend put the car in reverse and pretty much gunned it to get out of the way. I just happened to react fast enough to backpeddle quickly and get out of the way of the car door. It was just by inches though! scared me bad and it seemed like minutes passed before I could catch my breath. My friend was in shock too. She just wasn’t thinking and automatically moved the car.