Park brake? In general, all cars, all makes

that sounds about right, although you'll get lots of opinions. (admittedly, i never used it on my manuals unless on a grade as well)
newer cars have auto parking brake over a certain grade, so the engineers must agree with your dad.

 

I would always engage it when parking.

Dad was clearly thinking that the auto transmission has a parking pawl inside that can usually do the job of holding the car in place. He was right, but the parking brake applied also is cheap insurance.

That might sound like an unnecessarily belt-and-suspenders approach. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure my driver training taught to use the P position and the parking brake and angle the wheels into the curb. Belt and suspenders and body glue.

There can be other considerations, like whether anything else depends on regular use of the parking brake.

In gen 1 and gen 2 Prius (and maybe also in Prius c), the rear brake self-adjusters depend on regular use of the parking brake. If it isn't used regularly, the shoe clearance goes out of adjustment both for parking use and for regular braking. Other cars can be like that too; it kind of varies from model to model according to how the brakes are designed.

Also, too-infrequent use of the parking brake can lead to its cable rusting up, and then the parking brake is hard to apply (or, worse, hard to release) when you do want to use it.


On the other side, one piece of advice often given for when not to use the parking brake is if very bad freezing conditions are expected, because you don't want to come back to the car and have the parking brakes frozen in an applied condition that you can't release.

 

In a Gen2 Prius you always use the emergency brake because the park mechanism is not durable and known to fail... As for all other cars ever built, that's asking for too much.

 

Always use the Parking brake. In fact, Toyota agrees.
By default, on my 2025 Camry, (Hybrid) the parking brake is applied automatically by default.

 

When you stop a v and shift to park, the parking pawl engages in the teeth of a gear. Depending on the angle of the pavement that the car stops on, the pawl can get jammed hanging on the weight of the car and you won't be able to move the car.

Obviously my knowledge came from sad experience. Had to be towed several times until I learned the sequence. And the dealer had to bring in a regional tech to replace the bent pawl.

Stop, apply the parking brake so it takes the weight and strain off the pawl and then put it in park and allow the pawl to engage the gear without the weight of the car putting strain on it.

 

This Dad taught his kids to always set the "parking brake" when they park. YDMMV

 

That pretty much covers almost all scenarios.
The other is if your brakes are overheating going down a mountain - once you pull over and stop, Don't apply the parking brakes because it may wield itself to the drum or disk. Use the parking paw or leave the car in gear, for a manual trans.
I consider a cable parking brake the second to last ditch effort to slow down and stop a car with failed brakes. The final is to throw the car into park..... You'll need a new transmission, if you do that.....

YMMV

 

I always use mine. In some cars it's nice for passenger comfort- if you don't set the brake and a passenger disembarks a little faster than the driver, they could notice the car moving slightly as the lash in the parking pawl is taken up when the driver releases the service brakes. This movement however small can be an unwelcome surprise.

 

These is a reason it's called the "Parking Brake".

 

Especially if the pawl breaks.

 

we used to call it the emergency brake back in the day

 

There might have been a day when there were emergency brakes, maybe not the same design as parking brakes.

You can kind of use the parking brake to slow down if nothing else works, but you pretty much end up thinking "ok, that's just a parking brake, isn't it?".

 

I always use it. Eliminates the dilemma of deciding, and the missus hates that eerie roll-back feel. I’m not too fond of it either.

 

The only reasons against using it every single time is:

1. You wear out the mechanisms that activate it more quickly, meaning you'll need to replace it before being able to use it on hills or in an emergency if your service brakes were to fail for some reason.
2. In the winter, especially on older cable activated parking brakes, water can get into the mechanism, then you apply the brake before going to bed, and then the next day your parking brakes are locked on with waiting until either the afternoon (best case scenario) or next spring (worse case scenario) being about your only way to get them disengaged.

 

Likely OT, but in China driver training includes setting parking brake at every intersection stop. Which some drivers actually do. My question, is this taught anywhere else?

 

I've definitely seen reason (2) elsewhere.

(1) has me a bit skeptical. All the parking brake mechanisms I've seen seemed simple and robust and unlikely to wear out in ways that need replacement or impair their operation. (I've seen backing plates worn through where the shoes ride on them, but those were the same shoes used for service braking, and even the most avid parking-brake-user applies the service brakes a lot more often, so that's where that wear came from. Parking cables can stretch if the driver routinely stomps the pedal way harder than needed to hold the car. An old Ford I had handled that by having a tension limiter in line with the cable.)

Arrayed on the other side of that are all the ways not regularly using the parking brake can contribute to its not being there when you need it. Besides the possibility of simply rusting to the point of being unapplyable or unreleasable, there are designs like the gen 1 and 2 Prius where it's the parking brake use that keeps the rear shoe clearances adjusted.

Normal Prius operation can kind of conceal a problem with excessive shoe clearance: the actuator just sends more fluid back there and makes them work anyway. But if you go to use the parking brake in an emergency, there's only so much pedal and cable travel, and if the shoes have more than that much excess clearance....

 

"there are designs like the gen 1 and 2 Prius where it's the parking brake use that keeps the rear shoe clearances adjusted."

Up to a point. In Gen1, cable stretch could exceed adj capacity, requiring a trip down under to shorten cable. Shorten too much and get draggy. Oh bother.

 

Well, gen 1 wasn't unique in having a parking brake cable with a length adjustment.

It's just been my experience that people see that cable adjustment and jump right to thinking "aha! that is what I should adjust if I don't like how my parking brake feels" and it nearly always isn't.

In my experience, in nearly all cases where there's a problem with the parking brake not applying firmly, the root cause will be that the rear adjusters have become gummed up or rusty and are not doing their thing, and that is the problem that needs to be addressed. An owner who goes and touches the cable adjustment instead now has two problems.

Bear in mind that the rear shoe adjusters adjust parking brake and service brake operation alike. Any problem that could be properly described as "exceed[ing] adj capacity" would be a dire problem indeed.

Stretch in a parking brake cable can be a thing if the car's regular driver is built like Sasquatch and has been putting all his might onto the parking brake cable for years. I haven't known cables to stretch appreciably if the driver merely applies enough pressure to brake the car.

Ford had a clever tension-limiter part they would include in the cable as their answer to Sasquatch drivers. (It also served as a kind of extra-quick cable adjustment: install a new tension limiter, sit in the car, Sasquatch the pedal one time, boom, it's adjusted. )

 

My Prius seemed to have more play in that lash than previously owned cars. So I started using the parking brake all the time, and am now in the habit of it.

Have tried it out while coasting with engine off. It's just the rear brakes, so didn't do much. Service brakes without power assist slow the car more. Guess it is better than nothing if both service brake hydraulic circuits are lost.