Why the hell are you blending throttle and brake in a road car? There's very few situations even in racing where you need to do that.

It's the way I'd used to driving. For example I often use LFB'ing in FWD's when racing to help control the attitude of the car. I also trail-brake a little in the RWD racer with my left foot, cracking the throttle open as I near the apex.
True enough very little on the road but I still do it a little.

Billzilla

Agreed. In road driving, you can only annoy the drivers behind you while wearing out your brakes prematurely. On the highway, two feet/left foot braking is a bad habit at best. I hate being stuck behind left foot brakers with their brake lights blinking on every 90 yards. On the plus side, they do keep the brake mechanics and collision shops busy.

+1.

I do it a lotabit from habit and yes I wear out brake pads but in China it has also saved my ass a couple of times, your car travels a long way in the time it takes to take your right foot from the throttle to the brake.

A tip from Frank Gardner himself is to touch the brakes with your left foot just moments before you brake to get the pads settled and clear the gases out.

I too often balance the car on the brake, and keep the pedal totally full with left foot braking.Both in autos and manual. But I do not wear out brakes any quicker than anyone else. As you say you travel a long way transferring your foot from one pedal to the other.

I rather obviously do not ride the brake pedal with my left foot all the time, only using the pedal when needed. So for highway driving and most of the time driving around the city streets my left foot in on the foot rest, to the left of the brake and/or clutch pedal.

Anyway, back on track ...
In the theme of having standard systems across different types of cars I'll tell the story of the early Beechcraft Bonanza's. They're a single-engine piston aeroplane made in the US, and are perhaps best known as "The Doctor Killer", as they have a relatively high performance and for some reasons doctors love to buy them but often don't have the skills needed, thus crash them a bit more often than they should. Especially the V-Tail Bonanza.
Anyway, back in the early days of Bonanzadom Mr Beechcraft decided to put the landing gear control on the right and the flap lever on the left, contrary to the usual convention of gear on the left & flaps on the right. After a few years they decided to swap them over so they'd be the same as everyone else ..... resulting in a lot of gear-up landings by people used to having the controls the other way around.
So Plan B was to make the landing gear lever have a handle that looked & felt like a little wheel, and the flap lever have a handle than looked & felt like a little aerofoil. And this standard is now found on just about every aeroplane everywhere.
Um so there's my minor point on standards ....

How would that clear the gases out? Moreover, why do we want to "clear the gases out"? I can't see how it could possibly stop the car quicker or in a shorter distance than simply applying the brakes once.

I must be getting old as all this is sounding very boy-racerish to me. When I want to go there is the one pedal and when I want to stop there is the other. Very seldom is it my intention to go and stop at the same time. I generally stick to the one or the other. If we are talking about balancing the car and trail-braking and all that jazz, we are talking about race driving, not road driving. If you are driving that aggressively on the road you are doing it wrong in my personal view. Sorry to be a spoilsport.

EDIT: not denigrating anyone's driving techniques, only opining that Toyota's solution ("smart throttle" programming) does not impose a significant compromise on vehicle control, especially for the great majority of drivers.

I'll interject here to point out something about the late and lamented Frank Gardner...

He frequently voiced opinions or information that was frankly wrong. I don't know whether he said things to test the knowledge of his audience, to impress his audience or simply because he didn't understand or was passing on something others had told him. But he did this.

For instance, he often spoke about metals. Once I was talking to him about when the crank broke in the Maserati engine he used at Lakeside in November 1965, an engine that was about six years old if I'm understanding things correctly, he said that 'it had been sitting around for years just crystalising.'

Another time, when faced with a whole bunch of admiring amateurs, he gave his negative opinion about driving old racing cars. "You've got a chassis that's been sitting out in the yard day and night, expanding and contracting so it will have lots of metal fatigue," he said, adding that he had learned about Metallurgy.

But this last word he pronounced 'M'tall'gie'.

Frank was a great old guy, he had plenty of nouse and down to earth instinct for the right way to go to make a car work properly. But sometimes what came from his mouth could be questioned.

Whoops! And I was keen to see that this thread didn't go too far off-topic!

Metal fatigue and crsytallizing was a great meme spread by motoring mags of the 60s and 70s, in the UK.

Stop go traffic it is very handy when the trafic stops for no reason.Also in older cars sometimes covering the go pedal keeps the engine from stalling when cold.
As I have preached over the years the Lord has given us two feet. Use Them!

He also gave us ten toes but if you are taking off your shoes to drive, you are doing it wrong. I was trapped behind one of you knuckleheads on I-23 this morning. It's a bad habit, no getting around it, which promotes worse habits. Watch the brake lamps of the cars around you and you will find that two-foot brakers are the jackrabbits and tailgaters. You can see how that happens -- if you need to use the brakes that quickly and often, it's probably because you are positioning the car in traffic badly. If a driver needs to left-foot brake to avoid hitting the car in front of him when traffic checks up, he was tailgating. He needs to stop tailgating -- his foot-to-brake-pedal reaction time is not the problem.

If drivers would back off and go with the flow, using one foot for both brake and throttle, fuel economy and component life (especially brakes) will improve, and they will still get to your destination in the same elapsed time with a lot less sturm und drang. Seriously, I don't know how left-foot brakers can stand all that drama they are constantly driving their cars into. Has to be bad for the blood pressure. I wonder how much road rage we could avoid by eliminating left-foot braking.

Double points for the useage of Sturm und Drang in an unlikely setting.

Quadruple points for another dose of common sense.

All cars should have brake override systems to unlearn people from left-foot dragging their brakes constantly.

Triple if he'd managed to slip in a Druck.

That small time wasted is very important, it has saved me on numerous occasions from hitting the panic braker in front, or the driver who cuts in at approach to a stop or slower situation.
Try it and you will find it a lot safer way to drive, it will decrease the heart rate in peak hour chaos. Which I find more stressfull than being on a race track!!

I tend to use left foot braking in maneouvering an automatic, specially Rolls-Roye Silver Clouds which have a gearbox driven mechanical servo which gives no servo unless the car is moving when the brakes go on. Stop on an upslope using left foot braking, too; then just ease off the brake pedal like it was a clutch and away you go, no roll-back, no groping around for the underdash handbrake. (The Cloud uses an early Hydra-Matic auto box design with no "creep" to hold the car on an uphill.)

Since the dipswitch and clutch pedal have gone, and the left foot is unemployed now, why not use it for braking? It's the reason why so many automatic cars had such wide brake pedals (except the R-R, which has a dinky little round brake pedal).

I've travelled with some tailgating on-off the brakes brigade, and they were all right-foor brakers, just absurdly impatient. It's not a technique thing, it's a personality defect. I'm not a tailgater myself, as I drive other people's Rolls-Royces a lot, and prefer to sit well back. It would be very embarrassing to return such a car with a dinged front end!

As told to us by Jum Richards as he, George Fury, Rex Muldoon, Kevin Suffern (Monty's nephew), my brother and I were sitting around taking a break from our dirtbike ride in the hills up behind Marysville somewhere.

Jum was of course driving for Gardner at the time.

Is your left foot constantly hovering over the brake pedal, never resting on it? I doubt it.

On most cars placement of pedals is such that you feel more comfortable lifting the right foot off the accelerator to use the brake, rather than move your left foot all the way from footrest to brake. I am assuming you don't have balls? Left foot braking in a typical slushmatic car is not comfortable and puts a squeeze on the boys.

I must say I've been leaning in this direction since this aspect of the discussion started. And I've been known for espousing spirited driving in the roads, but I'm getting out of the habit.

The older I get the less aggressively I drive on the road... and the more I enjoy the time behind the wheel. I try to remember that old Jackie Stewart teaching method, driving like there is a punch bowl bolted to the hood with a tennis ball in it.

At the Slartibartfast school of driving, the objective is to get the tennis ball to hit the ground without it touching the car!

More seriously, I don't left foot brake but I have spoken to two chauffeurs who do. Apparently the technique, if applied correctly, is smoother.

I always try to get it into my opponent's goal.

On the floor of course, where most people keep their feet. The only reason you are likely to have your left foot hovering above the brake pedal, or resting on it, is because you are tailgating and ready for panic braking. My chauffering experience counsels against that technique. Also, I don't rest my left foot on the clutch pedal, or hover over it, when driving a manual car, unless changes are coming up very, very fast, eg, I'm on a racing circuit.

after or before running him over....







...a few times!

I like to park on one of his feet and then taunt him...

My view on left-foot braking, for what it's worth, is that it should be a procedure that is adopted very early in a driving career. I don't think that anything as critical as braking should be tampered with once the technique has been imbedded. I'm not saying it can't be done, just that in the rare emergency I feel it vital that instinct does most of the work. I get the impression that left-foot braking can lead to a lazy driving style - not always, obviously. I have never had a problem shiffting my right foot from accelerator to brake, but then I need my left for the clutch. Probably either style is fine if conducted properly, but even with automatic transmission I would, as I have done on occasions, stick to RFB.

Driving my Silver Shadow, which doesn't roll back and has a very fast takeup when you hit the loud pedal, I RFB. It depends on the car and the circumstances. I also heel and toe if the circumstances call for it. (I used to do it a lot way back when, when I had a Rover 2000TC with two huge 2 inch SUs on a dinky 2 litre engine, which simply wouldn't idle when cold, choke or no choke, and I lived in Canberra, the chillblain capital of Australia. It's the only place I've ridden a motorcycle while it's snowing.)

LFB is a valuable technique in certain circumstances, and in certain cars, and it's a good idea to know how to do it. I drive so many different cars that I can in fact switch from one technique to the other without a thought. Not bragging, just being factual.

Just to add a light note: When Douglas Bader lost both legs he had his MG converted to swap clutch and brake pedals over, because he was minus his right knee and could not switch that foot from one pedal to another. He used his left foot for brake and accellerator and right for clutch. How's that for an adaption to curcumstance!

That seems very reasonable. Here in the states anyway, it appears that a lot of LFBers have never driven manual-transmission cars and developed the habit out of sheer mental sloth. They drive around sort or going and stopping at the same time, making up their minds which in particular to do at the last possible instant. So they are constantly crowding everything in front of them... while talking on their cell phones and focusing on their hood ornaments.

Another pet peeve of mine, somewhat related: When I stop at a traffic light I leave at least a car length's space to the car in front of me. (Not just for safety but for security.) Often the next idiot behind me will stop inches off my back bumper. So I will creep forward a bit to maintain a safe gap. Whereupon he or she creeps forward to close up the gap again, like an automoton. These people must be thinking about something, but clearly it's not driving.

Once again, spot on! I would add to the second part, drivers who stop at lights, whether the first car or subsequent, who, having stopped, then decide to inch forward, stop, then inch again. They all do it, except me, so having stopped the correct distance behind the vehicle in front of me, if there are several other cars between me and the lights, by the time they change there can be anything up to a two cars' length gap ahead of me. The inability to judge distances is so much worse than it was - another thing that happens at lights is people who stop a cars length from the line. I am convinced that this happens because, once the line disappears below their sight-line, they have no idea where it is, so stop in mild panic. This is a fairly recent phenomenon.

Can you give an example?

I think people used to brake with both feet (TFB?), perhaps carried over from the days before power assist? I don't really have a problem with LFBing, it's just that too many people drag the brakes or lurch in traffic as a result. Your driving is probably above that reproach but I still don't understand the benefit of LFB.

Exactly. Everyone creeps. The longer the lights, the greater the creepage. I refuse to creep so when the red light is long and/or the line of cars is long I ride up right to the rear bumper and sure enough by the time it's time to move there's a car length's space ahead of me.

I'm only a creeper online.

Another recall:

http://www.autonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/arti...100129970/1147#

Just announced on the Today show. Huzzah!

A nice opportunity for them to check software and perhaps the electronic gizmos at the pedal...

Smokescreen stuff, I'm sure.

I don't live anymore in the polite, considerate and drivers with at least half a brain generally doing the same speed world. I live in China, how I dream to have a "flow". I drove back from Chengdu to Deyang tonight on the freeway and it was very bad, maybe because it was Friday night - the speed differences between a few of us at around 100 to 120 kmh and the 1/2 ton trucks is great and you need to be on your toes all the time. It's not the speed they do, 40 to 50, it's the slightly faster 1 to 20 ton trucks that suddenly pull out to overtake them that you need to watch. I not only left foot brake but the pedal also spends a good deal of time past the stop light switch in preparation, you would have to experience here before commenting.

Just a comment on the no shoes bit, Roger Bonhomme one of Oz's great drivers was one of those, he wore shoes that he would remove the soles and stitch a paper thin leather strip onto and drove with. I made a couple of pedals for him once for a rally car and they were just flat aluminium pieces that I lightly dimpled with a phillips screwdriver.

Been tested for the mumps?

I'm a creeper. I think you're right in that most people who do it aren't doing it with a plan in mind. I do.

I creep to reduce the chances of picking up brake judder. I come to a halt, then creep forward so that the brake pads don't stay clamped to the same part of the rotor for too long while hot.

Typically a nice guy, but is called a creep because girl's can be ruthless jerks

OMG you too? We should start a club!

/me sprints off to reload imaginesix' profile a dozen times

Hand brake?

Why would your discs and pads be hot enough to bother with that? And are the pads of a composition where it would matter?

I stay off the brakes as much as possible. I also use the clutch to hold the car (the fabled clutch rider!) on uphill stops, I never have excessive clutch wear.

That only takes a foot or two. Or you could get a stick shift and avoid the brakes most of the time.

Somewhat OT, but what do you mean by 1/2 ton truck? Load capacity? I'm used to maximum gross vehicle weight terminology, eg 3.5 ton.

There used to be a racer in my home town who always raced barefoot - in a front engine special at that (this is the early 60s). Eventually the officials got sick of his promises that he'd have shoes "next meeting" and refused to let him mount up. So he stormed off, returning in his wife's pink bedroom slippers.

I still keep thinking: bare feet in a car with the pedal shaft next to the engine???

The soles of his feet must have been harder than steel, and probably studded.

If you don't wear shoes the soles of your feet develop thick calluses, sort of like the soles of shoes, funnily enough.

Thick enough to hold small bits of broken glass, thistles etc.

Once you are used to it, the benefit of extra feel, it requires a seriously jagged or hot walking surface to make you think about wearing shoes.

The main problem with driving in bare feet is that your heel goes a bit numb after an hour or so. I can't imagine how it would be unsafe. No shoe has better traction than a bare foot, they are made for it.

How exactly do you get extra feel by roughing up your skin enough that it hardens over?

In the old front engine cars the pedals can get hot enough to fry eggs, specially as a lot of the early ones had one of the pedal shaft attached to the bell housing, and there was no insulation at all between engine and cockpit.

Load capacity.

1000cc pieces of crap like this except here they put about 2 tons on them and crawl along the freeways. In the fast lane often it goes without saying.

Yeah I stop short by maybe half a car length at the most and creep. And I don't feel like using the hand brake when I can just creep. KISS

If you do this in Orstarlia, and of course absolutely everybody does, you are libel if your hit from behind and you damage the car in front of you.

Can you imagine by law if everybody was the 1.5 or whatever it is car lengths apart, you wouldn't get into the city.