High Level Brake Lights.

[fossyant]

I won't mention the SUV's that have the massive light strip across the back that are blinding at eye level.

 

[T4tomo]

In a manual a good way to fark your clutch is to sit in gear at traffic lights with clutch and brake applied

ditto for an auto, far better for the gearbox to pop it into park at the lights rather than sit in drive with foot brake applied. Also in Park you don't need to mess about with (electronic) handbrakes etc (maybe if on a really steep slope)

 

[Richard A Thackeray]

It will be the 'auto hold' function. Come to a stop and the car applies the brakes continuously until you set off again. used to only feature on automatics but now it is pretty standard on manuals too. Great for hill starts!

Mine's a manual, as much as I dislike the 'brake-lights on' function, the auto hand-brake release helps when towing the BWSOW

 

[Richard A Thackeray]

In a manual a good way to fark your clutch is to sit in gear at traffic lights with clutch and brake applied

ditto for an auto, far better for the gearbox to pop it into park at the lights rather than sit in drive with foot brake applied. Also in Park you don't need to mess about with (electronic) handbrakes etc (maybe if on a really steep slope)

SWMBO has a tendancy to sit with cars in 'D', & hold on footbrake
Once, when she picked me up from work (back when we had the XKR), I could see the car from a distance
I had to walk round 2 corridors, down a stair-case (partially glazed) & over to where she'd parked
And she's still sat there on the foot-brake
I've always given it to understand that the transmission fluid can boil/deteriorate due to this

 

[Dadam]

As mentioned above, on my car (BMW 330D) you have to leave it in drive with your foot on the brake for the auto start/stop to work.

It doesn't stop the engine if the engine isn't warm or external temp is too cold. So if the engine is still running and I know the lights will take a while I will put it in park, but the default behaviour is to leave it in D with foot on brake.

 

[figbat]

SWMBO has a tendancy to sit with cars in 'D', & hold on footbrake
Once, when she picked me up from work (back when we had the XKR), I could see the car from a distance
I had to walk round 2 corridors, down a stair-case (partially glazed) & over to where she'd parked
And she's still sat there on the foot-brake
I've always given it to understand that the transmission fluid can boil/deteriorate due to this

Cars with a DCT will often disengage the transmission in this scenario. In a classic auto the oil in the torque converter will be being heated through shearing, which will accelerate oxidation and thermal degradation, but unlikely to get near boiling point. That said, there's a lot of oil in a classic auto box.

 

[Joffey]

In a manual a good way to fark your clutch is to sit in gear at traffic lights with clutch and brake applied

ditto for an auto, far better for the gearbox to pop it into park at the lights rather than sit in drive with foot brake applied. Also in Park you don't need to mess about with (electronic) handbrakes etc (maybe if on a really steep slope)

You just pop it in neutral and the engine stops if you have stop/start whilst auto hold is on.

 

[figbat]

In a manual a good way to fark your clutch is to sit in gear at traffic lights with clutch and brake applied

ditto for an auto, far better for the gearbox to pop it into park at the lights rather than sit in drive with foot brake applied. Also in Park you don't need to mess about with (electronic) handbrakes etc (maybe if on a really steep slope)

For the manual it's a bit of swings and roundabouts. If you sit with your foot on the clutch then you are spinning the release bearing under pressure, but it is quite a sizeable taper bearing so should cope OK. If you release the clutch you are now spinning the input shaft in the gearbox (you can sometimes hear this when you lift off the clutch). Again, the bearings should deal with this OK. The next issue is then putting it into gear - if you have sat with your foot on the clutch the input shaft is stationary and it should go into gear easily. If you have been in neutral with the foot off the clutch, you declutch and push it into gear, which means the input shaft has to stop spinning - the synchro does this job for you at the expense of a little ageing. In truth the gearbox will likely outlast the engine and chassis.

Auto - better to use N than P - especially on a hill hold. If you use P then you place the weight of the car on the parking pawl. Our Volvo uses auto-hold and disengages the transmission when stationary.

 

[Richard A Thackeray]

Cars with a DCT will often disengage the transmission in this scenario. In a classic auto the oil in the torque converter will be being heated through shearing, which will accelerate oxidation and thermal degradation, but unlikely to get near boiling point. That said, there's a lot of oil in a classic auto box.

The XKR was 'old school', I guess, with the 'J selector' (M-B 'box, I always understood)

She did the same with her C-HR, & now with the Q3
She won't drive my Kodiaq, with it being a manual

 

[Scottish Scrutineer]

I'm puzzled - ! On our car; a'58 plate Hyundai 1.30, said lights only come on when I press the footbrake pedal. However, I notice that when I'm in a queue of traffic, that quite a few vehicles have their brake lights on for some time whilst they're stationary. When you're stuck behind such a vehicle, this can be quite disconcerting in ther dark. Does this mean that the drivers of said vehicles have their foot on the pedal for some time, or is there some techno 'improvement' that I'm not aware of - ?

Yes, quite common these days. Drovers are no longer taught to apply the parking brake if stopping for short durations. Even for hill starts, they place reliance on the "hill-hold assist" whilst they take up the drive, even in manual gearbox vehicles.

If driving an automatic car with an auto start/stop feature, where the engine cuts out when stationary, you have to keep your foot on the brake or it doesn't work. In mine, if you put the handbrake on and take your foot off the brake, the engine starts. In order not to sit at traffic lights with the foot brake on, I'd have to put it in Park, apply handbrake, then take foot off brake. When setting off I'd have to put foot on brake, put it in Drive and remove handbrake. And the engine would be on all the while, increasing emissions and fuel use. Bit of a faff compared to just sitting with the foot brake on, engine switches off. Then lights go green, remove foot from brake, engine starts, off you go.

If I wanted the engine off while at the lights without having foot on brake all the time I'd have to do the above and then also turn off the engine.

With our MINI Clubman, which has the DCT (auto'box), the eco stop-start still functions if you apply the parking brake whilst stationary (and foot on the brake), then as you start to apply the accelerator, the engine restarts and you move smoothly off. I'd expect other BMW group cars to be the same.

I've always given it to understand that the transmission fluid can boil/deteriorate due to this

IIRC it was the torque converter and the gear bands that then took all the strain and as the gearbox was effectively locked, both were forced to slip creating heat and wear. Modern DCT transmissions have various sensors and servos that simply decouple the engine from the gearbox via the clutch packs. Similarly many of these have a "coasting" function built in where at light, or zero, accelerator positions, the electronics decouple the engine and its revs drop to idle, even though you are travelling at speed. Applying the brakes, or accelerator, then triggers re-engagement. With the Clubman, often the only clue that this is happening is by observing the rev counter. All in the interests of emissions/economy.

 

[icowden]

I'm puzzled - ! On our car; a'58 plate Hyundai 1.30, said lights only come on when I press the footbrake pedal. However, I notice that when I'm in a queue of traffic, that quite a few vehicles have their brake lights on for some time whilst they're stationary. When you're stuck behind such a vehicle, this can be quite disconcerting in ther dark. Does this mean that the drivers of said vehicles have their foot on the pedal for some time, or is there some techno 'improvement' that I'm not aware of - ?

I would imagine that all EVs have auto hold as well. Once I have braked in the ID4, the car holds the brake until I decide to drive again.

 

[Dadam]

With our MINI Clubman, which has the DCT (auto'box), the eco stop-start still functions if you apply the parking brake whilst stationary (and foot on the brake), then as you start to apply the accelerator, the engine restarts and you move smoothly off. I'd expect other BMW group cars to be the same.

Not on mine. It is a torque converter 8 spd auto not a DCT, and has a manual handbrake. The engine restarts when you take your foot off the brake regardless.

 

[MichaelW2]

Recently been driving around foreign parts. Some indicators seem to be coloured red not amber. Is this a thing on modern cars? Other indicators share the location of red or white lights so the indication is a change of colour of the light, not an on off amber flash from a new location on the car.
Really, whoever designed these new lighting systems needs a good smack. I think that designers feel the need to change perfectly good ( or even excellent) design, to justify their salary.

 

[Alex321]

My car (2015 Insignia) doesn't have fancy auto-stop, but does have an electronic handbrake.

The brake lights are NOT on when the car is held on the handbrake (which I normally do when stopped in traffic, since it does auto-release the handbrake as soon as I apply power. I can easily tell from the amount of red light reflected from a vehicle behind me.

I think having to keep your foot on the brake for the engine to stay stopped is a bit daft, but if they are going to implement that, it should also disengage the brake lights while the engine is auto-stopped.

It shows just how long ago I passed my test, in that when I took it, we were actually taught to hold the car on the clutch at an uphill stop in traffic or a junction. I think nowadays, doing that would probably be a fail. I rarely do that nowadays, because it both increases wear on said clutch and increases fuel consumption over using the handbrake.

 

[Deleted member 26715]

It's just the way people drive these days, they sit at lights with the car in gear clutch & brake pressed down. They have no concept of vehicle mechanisms or for that matter any concern about them. As to the argument about then being auto I suspect not as the majority of cars on the UK are manual.

They are indeed, and they don't learn three point turns, which is something you actually do use as a skill. I made my daughter do one last weekend - she managed it, but it's not covered in the test.

There never was a 3 point turn on the test, it was always TIR turn on road using forward & reverse gears, no mention of the number of movements. It's still in the test but for whatever reason it's not implemented