Chronicle of Death Announced: Manual Hand Brake

For years, the handbrake has been an element as familiar in our cars as the steering wheel or the pedals. However, technology advances, and with it we are losing many functions that until not so many years ago were mechanical. He manual handbrake It is becoming a kind of extinction in the new vehicle market: only 30% of the cars for sale currently offer it.

That means that seven out of every 10 new cars you can buy are now equipped with an electric parking brake. In fact, some manufacturers do not even opt to mount a manual handbrake, even in its most basic models, see Jaguar, Land Rover, Lexus, Mercedes and Porsche. If you want a model of this brand, it will have to be with the button instead of the lever.

The investigation, courtesy of the editor of Carurus, Chris Knapman, states that this trend is exponentially increased. In 2018, 37% of new-invoiced cars had a manual handbrake. In just one year, this percentage has decreased by 7%. Only Dacia and Suzuki are among the companies that still offer a manual handbrake in all their ranges.

The manual handbrake is as damned as the manual gearboxes and the clutch pedal

"Presented for the first time in a production vehicle, the iconic BMW 7 Series in 2001, electric parking brakes quickly went from being a novelty to what our research shows is now the norm", Knapman said. "These systems may lack the tactile feeling that some drivers value a traditional manual parking brake, but provide several benefits in terms of convenience, safety and packaging.".

If we take a quick look at some of the best selling models in Europe, we can see that many of them do not offer the traditional handbrake either as an option. Some examples can be found in the Volkswagen Golf, Ford Focus, Mercedes Class A, Tesla Model 3, Volkswagen T-Roc or Tiguan. Segments F, E and D have already abandoned them almost entirely, in C they are already languishing, while B and A will gradually abandon them.

The vast majority of electric hand brakes are automatically switched off when the accelerator is pressed lightly and often offers an automatic slope start assistance function with a safety plus. Perhaps, the biggest drawback that these devices have is that they cannot be operated on the move. Not only for the 180º turns to impress the bride, but also for safety (in extreme situations).

Against devices whose connection is physical, those that work with electrical impulses are potentially more defective. In 2017, Volkswagen issued a call for review in the United Kingdom for problems with its parking brake, at which time the Golf, Tiguan, Touran and Passat models were affected. That same year, Tesla did the same with a review of 53,000 cars worldwide. And neither Audi and Toyota have got rid of failures in this system.

The risk of piracy attacks also increases as more electronic devices are introduced into vehicles. Some research has previously demonstrated the ability to penetrate the switchboards, remotely controlling the direction and the pedals.