Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

Has anyone driven some of the newer auto's that has a foot brake instead of a handbrake? For those that don't know about it, they install this foot brake/pedal exactly where the clutch is on a manual car.

Has anyone subconsciously tried to clutch an auto and hit this foot brake before?

they have been doing that for years.

imagine trying to do handbrake turns in the old kingswoods that had the handbrake in between the drivers seat and the door.

also bring back the old highbeam switch next to the clutch pedal i saw.

  • Replies 47
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

i think the big fat pedal is for - as said so that you can plant both feet on it in an emergency. or so that you have more of a pedal to hit when braking? maybe some people miss it????

and the foot brake instead of a handbrake is just stupid... cant pull it when driving, and you cant rest yuor feet where it is

No clutch = more room + small brake pedal = more chance of missing = increase size of brake pedal = higher chance of hitting the brake pedal than thin air

Or could just be that auto drivers arent as coordinated as manual drivers therefore requiring larger brake pedal XD

the merc courtesy car i had from gt auto, had the accelerator pedal, the big brake pedal, and the handbrake pedal next to the brake pedal. Luckily, because im a n00b with german automobiles, wayne made sure i knew about the hand brake pedal that was situated where the clutch pedal would normally be situated.

hate to think what i would have gotten myself into if I thought that perhaps the merc had a tiptronic that works off the 3rd pedal!

I would rather have a massive pedal I cant miss in an emergency ( cause its so freakin big ) rather than have a smaller pedal and a toaster to electrocute me when accidentally stick my foot in it during an emergency stop !

my ol torry used to have the "hand" brake left side next to the main brake with a switch left of the console you had to "twist and pull"

of coarse the car started as a column shift auto, became a t-bar auto then a 4 sp manual. ahhhh the ol steel thing was great... doors 4" thick.. choice wood grain coloir plastics with the lino covered foam infils.. pure class

did burnouts well though with its leaf springs. major braking upgrade went from rear drums to 4 wheel disks .. awsome.

that thing chewed more blocks then any other car I've ever owned to this day.. it was the variable capacity car.. it had as much capacity as I could afford at the next time I blew something...

Edited by scheris

i suppose that in a manual car when you have to stop in a hurry you put your left foot on the clutch as well as your right foot on the brake, so you left foot stops your right foot over shooting. so with left leg out wide, you need a bigger brake pedal to help you hit the target better.

my guess at why the auto brake pedal is so big is so you can left foot brake (and i'm being serious).

That isnt it...

I honestly think if google didnt have an answer, there is no reason to it other than the ' 'cause I can' logic.

It IS so you can brake with either foot

Prove it. Because deadset that is one of the most dangerous things in an emergency as 99.99% of people just push down hard with both feet. So if one is on the go, and the other is on the woah, and you punch them both, you do not stop. (most people are smart enough to not use their left foot in an auto car so it isnt an issue).

And if car designers really ARE that stupid, probably not a bad idea they make the thing tiny.

Left foot braking is a pretty contentious issue. Most of the oldschool guys don't like it, but a lot of the modern advanced driving instructors have no problem with it.

To my knowledge, a lot of the professional racers with clutchless manual setups will always left foot brake these days, and even in clutch-equipped cars some racers will left foot trail brake, or use it to adjust the car's attitude.

I don't see how its "not smart" to left foot brake in an auto, as long as you know what you're doing (which, of course, does rule out the vast majority of road users). I find left foot braking my old man's auto car quite helpful when I'm going for a spirited drive in it, and I will occasionally dab the left foot in my manual car to tuck the nose in when its power-on understeering, but if I ever were to panic stop I'll instinctively right foot brake in either car.

every go-kart driver left foot brakes. i'd like to see someone use the 1 foot for braking and accelerating in a go-kart.

as scathing said, race drivers who left foot brake can get on the gas earlier, and keep the car stable through corners. it also helps to catch the car if you lock the rear brakes. greg murphy is probably the most notable of the v8 supercar drivers who left foot brake.

Has anyone driven some of the newer auto's that has a foot brake instead of a handbrake? For those that don't know about it, they install this foot brake/pedal exactly where the clutch is on a manual car.

Has anyone subconsciously tried to clutch an auto and hit this foot brake before?

the new mitsubishi colts have the pedal for the handbrake. its really odd i reckon. When i did

work experience at yorke mitsubishi (Adelaide) heaps of new colts were getting their hand brake cables and rear pads fitted with new ones because people were forgetting about the hand brake because it was a foot pedal and not the usual hand lever thingo. lol i thought it was funny, ccould of been a scheme by mistubishi to make people spend more money on changing rear pads and handbrake cables because they knew people would forget about the hand/foot brake pedal lol

People that drive auto's are crappy drivers and manufactures design them larger to give them all the help they can.

Nah, seriously I think it's that auto's used to be classified as luxury and only higher end cars had them and the bigger pedal signified the refinement and added benefit.

I would rather have a massive pedal I cant miss in an emergency ( cause its so freakin big ) rather than have a smaller pedal and a toaster to electrocute me when accidentally stick my foot in it during an emergency stop !

abviously you dont get how unbelievably convenient it would be to have a toaster in your car :woot:

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now



  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • Yeah, all the crude is used for fuels and petrochem feedstocks (pesticides, many other chemicals, etc etc). But increasingly over the last few decades, much of the petrochem synthessis has started with methane because NG has been cheaper than oil, cleaner and easier and more consistent to work with, etc etc etc. So it's really had to say what the fraction either way is. Suffice to say - the direct fuels fraction is not insigificant. Heavy transport uses excruciatingly large amounts. Diesel is wasted in jet heaters in North American garages and workshops, thrown down drill holes in quarries, pissed all over the wall to provide electricity to certain outback communities, etc etc. Obviously road transport, and our pet project, recreational consumption camouflaged as road transport, is a smaller fraction of the total liquid HC consumption again. If you're talking aboust Aussie cars' contribution to the absolute total CO2 production of the country, then of course our share of the cubic mile of coal that is used for power generation, metallurgy, etc adds up to a big chunk. Then there is the consumption of timber. Did you know that the production of silicon metal, for example, is done in Australia by using hardwood? And f**king lots and lots and lots of hardwood at that. Until recently, it was f**king jarrah! There are many such sneaky contributors to CO2 production in industry and farming. NG is used in massive quantities in Australia, for power gen, for running huge water pumps (like, 1-2MW sized caterpillar V16 engines running flat out pumping water) for places like mine sites and minerals/metals refineries. And there are just a huge number of those sort of things going on quietly in the background. So NG use is a big fraction of total CO2 production here. I mean, shit, I personally design burners that are used in furnaces here in Oz that use multiple MW of gas all day every day. The largest such that I've done (not here in Oz) was rated to 150MW. One. Single. Gas burner. In a cement clinker kiln. There are thousands of such things out there in the world. There are double digits of them just here in Oz. (OK< just barely double digits now that a lot of them have shut - and they are all <100MW). But it's all the same to me. People in the car world (like this forum's users) would like to think that you only have to create an industrial capability to replace the fuel that they will be using in 10 years time, and imagine that everyone else will be driving EVs. And while the latter part of that is largely true, the liquid HC fuel industry as a whole is so much more massive than the bit used for cars, that there will be no commercial pressure to produce "renewable" "synthetic" fuels just for cars, when 100x that much would still be being burnt straight from the well. You have to replace it all, or you're not doing what is required. And then you get back to my massive numbers. People don't handle massive numbers at all well. Once you get past about 7 or 8 zeros, it becomes meaningless for most people.
    • @GTSBoy out of the cubic mile of crude oil we burn each year, I wonder how much of that is actually used for providing petrol and diesel.   From memory the figure for cars in Australia, is that they only add up to about 2 to 3% of our CO2 production. Which means something else here is burning a shit tonne of stuff to make CO2, and we're not really straight up burning oil everywhere, so our CO2 production is coming from elsewhere too.   Also we should totally just run thermal energy from deep in the ground. That way we can start to cool the inside of the planet and reverse global warming (PS, this last paragraph is a total piss take)
    • As somebody who works in the energy sector and lives in a subzero climate, i'm convinced EV's will never be the bulk of our transport.  EV battery and vehicle companies over here have been going bankrupt on a weekly basis the last year. 
    • With all the rust on those R32s, how can it even support all the extra weight requirements. Probably end up handling as well as a 1990s Ford Falcon Taxi.
    • Yes...but look at the numbers. There is a tiny tiny fraction of the number of Joules available, compared to what is used/needed. Just because things are "possible" doesn't make them meaningful.
×
×
  • Create New...