Ivor Jones wrote:
In ,
SpamTrapSeeSig typed, for some strange,
unexplained reason:
: In article , The Natural
: Philosopher writes
:
: Incidentally, if you think it's bad here, North America is
: dreadful, as most cars are autos and people sit for minutes at a
: time with a foot on the brake pedal, at traffic lights.
:
:
: Doesn't bother me.
:
: It ruins night vision if you're stuck in a traffic queue, and it is
: much worse in the USA than here, because of automatic boxes.

When did the US stop fitting cars with handbrakes, then..?

Ivor

They didn't stop, or start. Its always been a sort of model to model
thing: like having column shifts and pull out 'parking brakes' on the
bench front seat things: then they went to autos, and the column shift
became a gear selector, and the parking brake - handbrake not needed for
hill starts anymore - became a foot brake probably to get it out of the way.

Americans liek a big frnt bench seat to squeeze their enormous butts
onto, and a floor unobstructed by clutter. So the brake generally goes
down the side of the front seatr, but if you are fat, even thats a
bugger to reach,so its generally a pedal.

Which no one uses, because teh trasmission locks in 'park'. and the
torque convertor does the hill starts.