"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...


"Andy Burns" wrote in message
...
Dave Plowman wrote:

Andy Burns wrote:

What I don't want to do is train my left foot to do braking, too much
potential for ****-up.

In the same way that my fingers remember all my complex passwords, but my
brain doesn't, my feet know how to do emergency braking, without any
input from my brain .. ok clearly not ... but that's how it feels.

Oddly, when most first try it, they find they start off braking too
hard.

Yes, whenever I've tried left foot braking, I've made friends with the
windscreen.

Because with a clutch you slap it down and release gently - rather the
reverse of braking.

I don't see what's to gain by left-foot breaking, once you have hold
assist available?

Why is hold assist even necessary? It's simple a sop to the people who can't
coordinate releasing the handbrake with operating the accelerator (and maybe
clutch) pedal.

Works better for tight parking situations and for backing up to the
trailer
hitch, you dont have to move your feet from one pedal to another
particularly
with a decent reversing camera which lets you see the trailer hitch and
towbar.

Yes I think we are all agreed that because automatics only have an
accelerator and a brake to regulate speed, whereas manuals also have a
clutch that can be slipped, *low-speed* *precise* movement is more easily
achieved with left-foot braking in an automatic. But is there any advantage
in using the left foot to brake in normal driving? Or is it just a case of
doing it because you can, rather than for any better reason. I have no
problem using the same foot for brake and accelerator in a manual, so I
don't see the benefit of using different feet in an automatic. Maybe there's
something explanation that I'm missing...

OK, so rally drivers resort to heel-and-toe operating the brake and
accelerator at the same time, but I'm thinking of normal driving where you
brake before the hazard and then accelerate out of it, and so don't need to
operate both pedals simultaneously.


Given that every automatic I've ever seen, going back to the mid sixties
(*), has an extra-wide footbrake pedal, the concept of left-foot braking is
something that has been around for a long time with automatics. So in the
early days of automatics, someone perceived that there was a benefit of
allowing it. I'm trying to work out what that reason was and still is.


(*) And probably a lot longer, but I can't comment on cars that were around
before I was born and before the earliest that I can remember ;-)