Yesterday morning I was listening to 'Car Talk', a very amusing radio programme on NPR in which two very wise and funny brothers give auto-related advice to listeners who phone in, and one story struck me as typically American: a woman rang up to say that she had a manual car - a rare enough occurrence in the US - that she always parked in first gear since her house was on a bit of a hill. However, the problem was that her car would sometimes roll down the driveway nonetheless, and she was concerned about what to do because she didn't want to use the emergency brake. The show's hosts recommended she park in reverse because it was a stronger gear and less likely to slip than first.
I find two things interesting about her story. Firstly, the listener referred to the handbrake as the "emergency brake", a term usually used in reference to a dead-man's handle that stops trains when the driver is in some way incapacitated. As I understand it, the normal term for the device on a car - even in America - is a handbrake.
Equally telling is the fact that not only was she reluctant to use the hand-brake for the precise purpose for which it was designed (i.e. to prevent parked cars from rolling away), even going so far as to suggest that it was for emergency use only (which would be?), but also that the experts did not waste any breath advising her to pull the handbrake.
It is true to say that since nearly all American cars are automatics, you could buy something that cost you an arm and a leg (provided it was the right and left one respectively)* and still be able to drive completely normally in the States. For a similar reason - i.e. that they put the engine in 'park' when they turn it off - Americans treat the handbrake as an appendix-like vestige of a bygone era, and one that can therefore be safely ignored, nay forgotten entirely.
As the above example highlighted perfectly.
I find two things interesting about her story. Firstly, the listener referred to the handbrake as the "emergency brake", a term usually used in reference to a dead-man's handle that stops trains when the driver is in some way incapacitated. As I understand it, the normal term for the device on a car - even in America - is a handbrake.
Equally telling is the fact that not only was she reluctant to use the hand-brake for the precise purpose for which it was designed (i.e. to prevent parked cars from rolling away), even going so far as to suggest that it was for emergency use only (which would be?), but also that the experts did not waste any breath advising her to pull the handbrake.
It is true to say that since nearly all American cars are automatics, you could buy something that cost you an arm and a leg (provided it was the right and left one respectively)* and still be able to drive completely normally in the States. For a similar reason - i.e. that they put the engine in 'park' when they turn it off - Americans treat the handbrake as an appendix-like vestige of a bygone era, and one that can therefore be safely ignored, nay forgotten entirely.
As the above example highlighted perfectly.
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* Sorry: bad joke
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