Is the use of a handbrake or parking brake still taught?

[MCKDAVID]

Like parm, we had to undergo défensive driver training for work.. You Can read that as à basic driving évaluation. Théy didn't teach us Much, only reviewed how we drive. Two comments on mine, indicating turning into à junction when thére was no one thére... Instructor, why did you bother there was no one to indicate to. My réponse, maybe, but maybe there was and i didn't Sée thèm, by indicating i'm covered, no no not necessary. Ok if you Say so.... i'm Not at all convinced!
Thé other thing hé remarked was i didn't use my rear view mirror at all, yes i agréé, i drive a van which doesn't have one, so have got used to using only side mirrors.. no you need to use thé rear view Always . Ok i'll start using something that's Not Thére... Great Idea..
Conclusion, thé Guy was paid à lot, and had to justify his Time. Frankly, it was à wasted opportunity to learn from an expert, unfortunately hé had nothing of intérêst to add...

 

[GW8IZR]

I drive a 2005 Astra automatic, that too will drop down a gear going down hills. It must have a tilt sensor or other methods to detect hills.

The Toyota would only do it if I rested my foot on the brake pedal so I always assumed it was an electrical signal - cant remember what the nissan needed, the Navara auto was a really nice gearbox. My 99 Auto would do it when towing a 1.5 tonne trailer mast and that just detected the over run as it would do it on the flat, I assume by vacuum as the electrics back then were very simple.

 

[fizzy]

I went on a drivers awareness course and they weren't amused at me using the gears to slow down . the thing I will say is though older vehicles had larger heavier cranks and flywheels and u could use the engine for braking. modern vehicles have light cranks and flywheels and give very little engine braking when u take your foot of accelerator and drop gears

Diesels have pretty good engine braking due to compression and this year mazda have finally cracked it and are bringing out a petrol engine with no spark plugs and an 18:1 compression ratio!

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

Part of the problem with that is if the new driver then drives an older car then they could potentially end up in a dangerous situation, surely it's far better to teach to the lowest common denominator i.e an old car without ABS, traction control, stability control etc etc ? After all these aids can and do fail which then leaves the driver with no option but to have a crash.

I have old vehicles that only have drum brakes and knowing how they can fade on a big hill I choose to always use engine braking rather that rely solely on the brakes even when driving modern vehicles and I feel it would be far better to teach this technique to today's youngsters than "push the clutch and rely on the brakes".

It's better to drive in a manner that avoids problems in the first place rather than rely on technology to keep you safe IMO.

Brake fade is a scary thing. Loaded ldv convoy suffered brakefade heading down the hill into porlock (north Devon) horrible feeling. Thankfully the gradient decreases halfway down before the final decent. Engine braking all the way down but still suffered fade.
Was taught by my father as a child to pick a speed and when you hit it brake and slow. Repeat till the bottom.

 

[normspanners]

this year mazda have finally cracked it and are bringing out a petrol engine with no spark plugs and an 18:1 compression ratio!

HAHA typical of mazda and next they will be saying they are making an engine with no pistons, camshafts, conrods or crankshafts or is that going too far ?? if they did build one I bet it would be a right wankel of a thing

 

[normspanners]

Brake fade is a scary thing. Loaded ldv convoy suffered brakefade heading down the hill into porlock (north Devon) horrible feeling.

it is a hard choice to make if on the hill down the wurzen pass ^^^with 8 red hot brakes if I had lifted off it would have resulted in NO brakes at all because it gets to the point that the fluid boils and escapes when you lift your foot off, so when at that stage its better to keep ya foot on and keep some sort of brakes working
the mad thing was the escape road went up at the opposite angle to the hill and was just a forest road so with no brakes you would have been going up and down both hills until you eventually stopped and run out of gravity like a hot wheels car

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

That's what I ended up doing. Wife was blissfully unaware until she asked what that smell was and why had I stopped.

 

[normspanners]

Ha just googled it http://www.dangerousroads.org/europe/austria/4482-wurzenpass-korensko-sedlo.html

The escape road is pictured here it actually cut across the hairpin so if ya brakes went you took out the car coming up !!

the blue arrow is the hairpin with the escape road with the crosshatch across the up road the red arrow is where I eventually stopped and bled the brakes sorry for going fftopic: but just reminiscing it was 35/ 40- odd years ago it did make its mark on me at the time !! I used it a few times to save going into Italy on way to greece.

 

[fizzy]

I was talking to a mate's niece earlier. Lovely girl aged 19. I helped her pick out her first car - a pretty new Audi A1 - not my choice but there you go.
Anyway she had a bit of a scare yesterday and a VERY lucky escape!
She came out of her new flat and found her car was missing. She called my mate in a panic asking what she should do. He went around to see her and found her car up against some bushes at the end of the road! Yup she hadn't applied the handbrake properly (mechanical one).
I asked if she had left the car in gear and she said she didn't know you could do that.
There have been several deaths lately in our area alone because of handbrakes not being used properly.
I don't think i was ever taught that either but it should be part and parcel of learning!

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

Ha just googled it http://www.dangerousroads.org/europe/austria/4482-wurzenpass-korensko-sedlo.html

The escape road is pictured here it actually cut across the hairpin so if ya brakes went you took out the car coming up !!

There's a few escape roads like that on the way down too. Wouldn't fancy using em unless there's no choice.
Can't time code on the app. 5mins in is the climb. Some Muppet stops and its a struggle to get back into second.

Some great roads across the moors to get there too.

 

[fizzy]

This is why I love land rovers - put it in low range and who needs brakes?

 

[normspanners]

They drive on the right in Austria, so you don't cut across traffic to use that escape road...

correct! I was quite aware of that having driven for 3000 odd miles to get there and through yugoslavia, slovakia now, look at the map traveling from left to right as you come down driving on the right side of the road with no brakes you have to cut across the left side of the road which is the up side of the road the crosshatch markings on the road are there to mark that it is part of the escape road so that you actually make it up the escape road

 

[Robotstar5]

I'm sure I remember as a kid seeing sand traps at the side of the road on steep hills?.

 

[fizzy]

YES like this!!! Very apt post I was working on this!

This has to be the worst escape lane ever! Notice the shiny new sign!
Unless the trees are for added effect...........
Basically over the years the escape lane has been swallowed up.

 

[normspanners]

Yeah it was that wicked little right before the hairpin it says 18 % but think that is maybe the average for the road it was hard to stand on it, it was that steep, we did a rough measurement and it was 1 in 3 and virtually straight, to the hairpin but with crash barriers on either side so you couldnt run off the road to the side to stop, you just HAD to keep going down !! I luckily didnt have to use the escape road BUT we went round that hairpin at a fair speed though, well it felt like it with a rally car on the trailer behind trying to do its best to get past you. I managed to stop in that layby and couldnt touch the wheel nuts and had to try and cool it down by spraying water mist on wheels to save the tyres exploding.
My mate said he was ready to jump if it didnt flatten out when it did.

 

[normspanners]

I'm sure I remember as a kid seeing sand traps at the side of the road on steep hills?.

yeah or gravel traps the rhuallt hill has a gravel trap but that hill is a baby. I have just found this account of somebody doing it on a bike !!

At the top of the pass, we crossed the border into Austria, country 18 on the trip. The border has all the official signs and stations but they are all unattended as both Slovenia and Austria in the EU. Surprisingly, there was still left over defense bits and pieces. This border would have been a key dividing line between the Iron Curtain and the west only 25 years ago. We read a lot about this side of Wurzen but were still shocked by how steep it was going down. There was one section about 1k long where I seriously thought that we would blow a tire or two. I’m sure that it was over 20%, the road surface was quite bumpy and we were doing all we could to keep our speed in check. I was hanging off the back of my seat, mountain bike style and thinking about using my feet as a last resort. We stopped at the bottom of this pitch, right by a runaway truck ramp for more brake cooling. We were grateful that our tires held. We saw a couple of guys riding up this side of the pass. I’m not sure how they could do it unless they had super low gears on their racing bikes. We were both petty happy to finally reach the bottom sections where the road straightened out and we could let the bikes run. Both of us had very sore forearms and hands from braking on both Vrsic and Wurzen passes.

the security was there when I was and the guards where pleased to just see people I think, they stood with their rifles cocked and they couldnt believe we had climbed it with the trailer, I took the car off on the way up, but it had an accident on the rally so I thought it would be ok as gravity was helping us down hum it was ok---- JUST. It really took me by surprise that it was running away so easily in first gear! There was just no stopping it, a bit like the bikes in the account.

 

[wookie]

Roundabouts are one of if not the biggest area I have to fix for full licence holders who come for further training.

So many dont indicate, indicate wrong or so late the other drivers already know what you are doing.

I think you've got some work to do...

I encounter quite a few roundabouts usually, so today I took particular notice of what everybody else was doing, all most everyone didn't indicate at all, one indicated right and then went straight on, only a couple bothered to indicating left when leaving the roundabout

 

[Agrismith]

On a far more serious note there was a nasty accident in Bath recently. A stone lorry with a new driver ran away down a hill and killed several people. The lorry owner and the mechanic received very stiff jail terms due to the bad state of the lorry but the driver was found not guilty.
Now I am not saying the verdict was wrong however I think an older driver wouldn't have had an accident. The new driver had cooked the brakes and it was bad fade that caused the accident. He was driving as he had been taught.
I called into the Tesco petrol station in Glynneath at the bottom of the A465 hill one day. There was a tanker discharging petrol. The smell of burning brakes was awful and I could see smoke still coming from the wheels. I asked the driver what was wrong and he said - oh it always does it after that hill. Needless to say when I asked him if he used his gears I was told there is no need to do that on modern lorries.................

I know of the incident you mentioned and the reason the driver didnt get prosecuted is there was a paper trail to say he had made the owner aware of the problem with the brakes on multiple occasions
As he had filled in his daily check sheet to say that the break warning light was on in the cab
The break waring light comes on when either there is an abs fault or the pads are to low
Either of which will render them useless

Secondly the majority of lorrys are actually automatic although not torque converters the engine breaking isnt brilliant on them in comparison to older lorrys
And the exhaust brakes are activated by the brake pedal as opposed to a lever like older lorrys

 

[Rocketman]

There does seem to be some confusion re the brakes & gears.

Brakes are for slowing BUT you dont do it with the clutch down.

Sadly many learners start to use the method as it is easy to get the gear shifts right & they dont have to listen & feel when a change is actually needed. They also tend to get caught out if the plan changes from slow to stop to slow then go.

Also sadly far to many learners are taught to follow a pattern to pass the test in the lowest hours.

The reason for this is PARENTS.

Yep thats right YOU.

The most common question I get asked by a parent is along the lines of how few lesson can you get them to pass the test in. IE how cheap.

Followed up with BUT I passed in 5-15 hours when you tell them the averages.

Parents do not want their kids to learn to drive but to pass the test.

Thankfully my marketing is now weeding out that type of parent & I get more of the ones that want their kids to actually learn to drive to a safe standard.


When your kids learn a subject at school or college they have to learn the whole subject. They dont know which bit will be tested. The driving test is a known factor that covers less than 5-10% of the driving syllabus.
The Gov produce a course requirement for learners.

Its called
National standards for driving and riding

Check it out here, you might be suprised.

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-driving-and-riding-standards

The figures allude to something more significant and while we can complain I would say today the new drivers on the road are much better than 25 years ago.

25 years ago it was not uncommon for someone to have 10 lessons of as little as 30 minutes and pass the test. Now days fortunately it is simply pretty impossible to pass a driving test with no little experience. So as much as parents want their kids to pass as fast as possible they need to get to a higher standard then a huge amount of people already on the road that have passed their test.

The trouble with any standardised test that needs to be on a level playing field is that it will always be process of training for it specifically but at least it is better than it used to be.

 

[Rocketman]

I wholeheartedly disagree that standards have risen.

It may be that there are slightly less fatalities nowadays, but there are more new driver accidents - it's just that cars are safer to crash now.

I passed a bit over 20 years ago and the normal thing was to get a slightly older car - where airbags were a pipedream, abs was learning when to decrease pressure and the crumple zone was the passenger compartment.

Now, the normal thing is to get a nearly new car on the never-never (or get your parents to), one with all the safety - unfortunately all the safety means that if anything standards have dropped because it's far less likely to hurt if you hit something.

The reason 'we' passed with fewer lessons wasn't that standards were lower, it was that far more of us weren't really entering with no idea at all - we had a clue as to what pedal did what. When travelling with parents we looked at what they were doing instead of updating our facetubespace status.

'We' took pride in knowing how to reverse into a parking space and knowing the width and length of our vehicles - now it's reliance on sensors and buzzers.

So no, today's new drivers aren't better at all - in most cases they are significantly worse - but tech that 'we' didn't have masks that fact.

There is fact and then there is opinion which are two very different positions. Opinion shouldn't be pushed as fact.