NY wrote
Rod Speed wrote

It isnt just one of those, no reason why you cant do
both but don’t turn the ignition off. And it isnt just the
handbrake either, the normal brakes should be used too.

I wouldn't touch the handbrake. Why should a weak brake that has
bugger-all effect on slowing down a car that is moving (in my experience)
be any better than the much more powerful footbrake which acts on all four
wheels?

The handbrake on my Getz very effective. If you try to drive off without
releasing
the handbrake the whole car sort of just squats, doesn’t move at all.

I agree tho, it makes much more sense to use the foot brake, not the
handbrake if only because that’s much more powerful with all cars.

If the footbrake fails to make any impression on the speed (eg because the
friction of trying to slow down when working against the engine has worn
away the pads) then the handbrake isn't goign to have any more success
since it normally controls the self-same pads - except only those on the
rear wheels.

And if the handbrake *does* stop just the rear wheels, on a front-wheel
drive car where the front wheels are the only ones being driven, then you
will risk locking the rear wheels long before the front wheels stop
turning, which is not conducive to driving in a straight line :-)

That’s really only true in slippery conditions.

I'd turn the ignition off, put the car into neutral
if its an automatic or press the clutch if a manual
and use the normal brakes to stop the car while
turning towards the curb to get the car out of
the way of any following cars.

Turning off the engine would lock the steering.

No it doesn’t. You have to remove the key to lock the
steering on mine. And even if it did lock the steering,
that may still be a useful thing to do if you are going
to hit something if you don’t stop quickly.

Pulling on the handbrake would lock the rear wheels.

Not necessarily, depending on how effective they are.

Depending on how hard you tug on the handle, I'd say its effect would be
either minimal or risk locking the un-driven wheels rather than the driven
ones (assuming FWD).

No reason why you can't be selective when using it,
but again, makes more sense to use the foot brake.

I think the US use of the term "emergency brake" is very misleading. I
wouldn't use it in an emergency except as a last resort after I've tried
footbrake.

Sure, but that’s why its called the emergency brake,
you use it when the foot brake doesn’t work, in that
emergency. They don’t mean that you should use the
handbrake instead of the foot brake in any emergency.

Presumably they don’t call it the parking brake so
the less technical people realise that it isnt just for
parking, but also is available when the foot brakes
have failed. Not that that is at all common anymore
with modern cars having dual circuit hydraulic brakes
that don’t all fail at once.

But in those days the steering didn’t normally lock
when you removed the key from the ignition.

I was going up a steep hill so I was in a low gear with the engine going
quickly. When I got to the top and changed from second to third, the
engine raced but I put it down to bad clutch/accelerator coordination.
When it happened again as I changed to fourth, I realised it wasn't -
especially as the car shot forward like a scalded cat.

I realised what had happened very quickly and also knew what would
happen if I pressed the clutch or put the car into neutral, which was my
first instinct: the engine would race very quickly and if it went well
over the redline speed, it could well throw a piston which would be very
bad news if all that fast-moving metal came to rest in an instant.

So somehow I managed very calmly to turn the ignition just far enough to
kill the engine by putting it into the accessory position without
turning all the way off. Had I been travelling "at 120 mph with the
engine redlining" (as it said int he video) it might have been a
*little* more difficult to turn it just the right amount. ;-)

Don’t see why.

It may be difficult to turn the key in a controlled manner rather than as
hard as possible,

You don’t have to turn it in a controlled manner,
just turn the ignition off to stop the engine.

if you are panicking because you are at risk of hitting the car ahead or
are approaching a tight bend.

Am I right that the last thing you want to do is let the engine greatly
exceed its redline speed and risk it seizing up

Depends on the situation. If you are likely to run into something
if you don’t stop quickly, the engine seizing is less important.

(I'm assuming that the car is old enough not to have a rev-limiter)?

Do any steering locks actually lock the steering while the key is still
in, even in the off position?

My Hyundai doesn’t.

But the steering gets much heavier because with the
engine off, the power steering isnt working anymore.

I found this out when the "fan belt" (which drives alternator, aircon and
power steering on my car) broke as I was driving at 70 mph in Lane 3 of
the motorway. I head a flap-flap-flap-splat noise, the ignition light came
on and the steering became heavy. I knew immediately what that was :-(

Sure, but most women drivers wouldn’t. I even had one fella who I had
got a lift from when hitchhiking as a teenager wonder out loud what the
significance of the red light on the dash was, the over temperature light.

The car carried on fine, running on the battery, but I did have to tug the
wheel to make the car move over to the left.

I did try the Getz to confirm my recollection that the steering
lock did only come on after the key is removed from the
ignition. The steering is certainly heavier with the engine
not running, but I didn’t have to tug it. It’s a light car tho.

As it happens, I was only about a mile short of the exit where I was
planning to come off anyway, and I knew of a garage on the side road just
after I'd turned off, so I made for that. It took a fair amount of effort
to persuade the car to go round the roundabout, presumably because the
power steering ram was trying to compress the fluid as I turned the wheel
and hence the steering rack.

But I made it safely to the garage and the RAC man didn't take *too* long
to get my car home. I knew I'd be able to drive it to my local garage just
round the corner from home. As it happened, the journey home wasn't
incident-free. The RAC van towed my car front-wheels-
raised, on a little trolley that runs on its own wheels. When we were
nearly there, the van lurched sideways and RAC man swore. One of the
little wheels that the trolley ran on had burst :-( Fortunately he carried
a spare for that wheel as well as the running wheels of the van, but he
had to take my car off the trolley to be able to jack it up. That little
exercise added another quarter-of-an-hour to the journey.