"charles" wrote in message
...
In article ,
:Jerry: wrote:


Indeed, many people do think that the parking pawl can be relied on to
hold a vehicle only to discover that their vehicles have disappeared
when they return (they are normally found at the bottom of the hill,
embedded into what ever they collided with....

which is probably why I was taught - 50 years ago - to park with the
engine
in gear. And of course what "Park" does on automatic boxes.

I'm always wary about parking with the car in gear except on a steep hill
when I always choose first if I'm parked uphill and reverse if I'm parked
downhill, because more than once when someone else has driven my car and
left it in gear I've operated the starter without checking that the car is
in neutral and the car has lurched forwards - hence the use of a gear that
will always try to take the car uphill rather than downhill.

After a couple of cock-ups, I soon got into the habit of always giving the
gear lever a side-to-side waggle before starting and also before letting the
clutch up when I park, to confirm that the car really *is* in neutral.