Is the handbrake grappling with extinction?

[Tucson Z60]

Both of my parents drove manuals most of their lives, so I was trained to set the parking brake every time, no matter what. Doesn't hurt anything, and keeps it from freezing up due to inactivity.

And the ''parking pawl'' in your A/T will appreciate it

Biggest reason I use it. Be it on hill or not if you can tell when the linkage has bound up on the pawl because that when it's hard to pull it out of park to drive or reverse.

Our driveway is at an incline and my wife does not set it and then complains at times why it's hard to get out of park...

I tell her to set the parking brake but she does not do it....and gets pissed when I pull it when I am in the passenger seat of her Mustang....she says I pull it up and it's to tight for her to release

 

[PenguinLTZ]

Every day on a slight incline. Dont want the weight on the parking pawl, and was trained to drive on a manual

 

[Nick The Great]

That's kinda crazy that NJ requires a console mounted emergency brake...

It's obviously a result of lobbying by the big handbrake manufacturers. There's really only one player in that game. And it is their only product they produce. Without that company, NJ would lose about 350,000 jobs

 

[Darkanion]

That's kinda crazy that NJ requires a console mounted emergency brake...

It's obviously a result of lobbying by the big handbrake manufacturers. There's really only one player in that game. And it is their only product they produce. Without that company, NJ would lose about 350,000 jobs

Are you saying Tony Soprano went into the handbrake business after that show ended??

 

[Nick The Great]

That's kinda crazy that NJ requires a console mounted emergency brake...

It's obviously a result of lobbying by the big handbrake manufacturers. There's really only one player in that game. And it is their only product they produce. Without that company, NJ would lose about 350,000 jobs

Are you saying Tony Soprano went into the handbrake business after that show ended??

No, but it's pretty common knowledge that Jimmy Hoffa was working on a cheaper, more effective solution. And we all know what happened there . . .

 

[RebelThunder]

That's kinda crazy that NJ requires a console mounted emergency brake.. The car I passed my driver's test in (an '81 Crown Victoria) wouldn't have worked for them (floor mounted).. Thinking back, I don't think any of the cars & trucks we owned in that time period would've worked. They all had floor-mounted emergency/parking brakes..

As for the button-activated electronic parking brake, my Outback has one. It is apparently hydraulically activated. It kind of "groans" when you press the button. It does automatically release when you put the car in gear and press the gas though.. IF you have your seat belt on.

Unless I'm parked on some sort of incline, though, I hardly ever use parking/emergency brakes..

So if you don't put your seat belt on, the parking brake will stay engaged?

 

[Darkanion]

So if you don't put your seat belt on, the parking brake will stay engaged?

Yeah, the automatic shutoff will not activate if the seat belt isn't latched.. You can reach over and push the button to manually release it, though..

I hardly ever run into that issue. But, there have been a few times that I have parked the car in the driveway (it's sloped pretty good) and set the brake.. Then, I'd go out later to pull the car in the garage and forget about the seat belt thing.. "wtf!? Why isn't it disengaging!? Oh.. yeah.. duh!"

 

[PJB4x4]

Ive never used it in the 3+ years Ive had my truck. Theres no point since its got an automatic tranny.

I always used it in the 5 speed vehicles I had though, except my '89 S10 that didnt even have functional rear brakes.

I used to use it to slide around in my Neon with an automatic but just for fun.

 

[Kennyray]

I don't even know if mine works. I never bothered to check it because there are no hills here.

 

[Bowtie2Sierra]

My first truck at 16 was a manual so I got into the habit of using the parking brake right away. I still use it almost daily here to keep the weight of the truck off the pawl like others have mentioned.