The more things change the more they remain the same

My driver’s license is nine years old and I am still learning new things about cars to this day. This week I drove a friend’s car and upon moving off I realized that there was no hand brake. Now, this is a car I’ve been in several times in the last few weeks but I never realized that something as common as a hand brake was missing. He kept telling me that the brake was on but I couldn’t, for the life of me, find the hand brake. He laughed at me and said he was rethinking whether or not he should allow me to drive his car.

He then turned on the ceiling light (since it was night) and pointed to the ‘foot’ brake, located to the left of the regular gas and brake pedals. He instructed me to step on it in order to release it. That’s when I realized that my license was old and so was my knowledge of modern cars J. Anyways, apart from the ‘foot’ versus ‘hand’ brake in that car everything else was pretty much standard.

The next day I told my brother about the interesting ‘foot’ brake and he laughed and said, ‘nothing is new under the sun’. He then explained that back in the days when my father drove a Colt van, there was no hand brake. Instead there was a foot brake, pretty much like what I was describing to him.

I know fashion has a way of coming in and out of style, but does that also apply to car brakes? Why was the ‘foot brake’ making a comeback? Is it really making a comeback or was that car just strange?

Just from my experience, I think the hand brake would be easier to access, given that your driving foot will be occupied with the regular pedals. However, since the hand brake is usually just used as an emergency or precautionary brake, maybe its position is not really that important, as long as it is accessible.