83 Lincoln Continental

[Electronic M]

I'm surprised they even put parking brakes on cars with automatics...The park position has never failed or even malfunctioned on any car I've been in, and most cars the parking brakes even when new have so little effect that you'd probably still hit whatever you were stopping for if your regular brakes failed and you remembered to engage the parking brake...

[init4fun]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

I'm surprised they even put parking brakes on cars with automatics...The park position has never failed or even malfunctioned on any car I've been in, and most cars the parking brakes even when new have so little effect that you'd probably still hit whatever you were stopping for if your regular brakes failed and you remembered to engage the parking brake...

The reason is this ;

If you park on an extreme hill without using the parking brake the pressure of the car trying to roll down the hill can be so great as to jam the park pawl and make it impossible to shift out of park . Whenever parking on an extreme hill your supposed to set the (properly maintained & working) parking brake first , and then put it in park . Conversely , your supposed to take it out of park before releasing the parking brake when leaving .

On the hills that 99% of us drive and park on this will never be a problem , but I'll bet drivers in places like San Francisco are very well versed in parking brake use with automatic shift cars