Does anyone drive an auto with two feet; braking with their left?

I do – it just takes a bit of practice. Early attempts were a bit harsh on the brakes but you/your left foot soon gets used to it 😀

Thats a great video

It really is.

I saw something similar on TV a few years ago.  They had a group of subjects wear glasses which inverted their vision.  They were all over the place, but after a couple of weeks had adjusted so that upside-downovision was the new normal.  Then they took the glasses off and none of them could walk properly.

Curious things, brains.

On long and boring journeys, generally in slow moving/crawling traffic, I drive with my left foot. It’s an auto so I only have two pedals, took me a little while to have the finesse, but it’s now fine.

it’s a thing because most auto’s have a double sized brake pedal and starting out there is a natural conditioning for most manual drivers to hit it with ‘clutch power’ using the left foot.  Normally it is a slow speed operation thing dribbling up to a junction or something.

As I pulled up outside home after picking up a new [German/ Silver/ automatic] car just on 2 years ago, I slowed down and stamped my left foot onto the brake pedal in an unfortunate muscle memory action of clutch down. The car coming up behind me was a bit surprised. As was I.

I drove a Kia Niro at the weekend. It’s an automatic but has a pedal to release/set the hand brake.

<3 @wwaswas

It won’t help that most auto spec cars will have massively over servoed brakes where you can barely feel the pads have engaged let alone give you any sense of control over the braking.  A major bug-bear of mine on most modern cars tbh.

As I pulled up outside home after picking up a new [German/ Silver/ automatic] car just on 2 years ago, I slowed down and stamped my left foot onto the brake pedal in an unfortunate muscle memory action of clutch down. The car coming up behind me was a bit surprised. As was I.

Was as a passenger in a jaguar when the driver was being trained to use the gear box like a manual, first time he changed gear, at a reasonable speed,he pushed down on the clutch which was obviously an over sized brake pedal. Apparently it was fairly common so much that the instructor had turned the dash cam around to capture our look of panic in the rear seats as the car slammed to a halt

To stop understeer in a front wheel drive car, dabbing the brake shifts more weight to front wheels and removes/reduces understeer while still having the power on throttle.

Just make sure you get really, really good at that before trying it on a winding country lane.

Frankly – it’s a competition technique.

Erm.exactly… right foot Go pedal, right foot Brake pedal.

Leave your left foot on the rest provided.

I can’t visualise any other way of driving an automatic vehicle.

Why do people confuse the simplest of tasks?

It’s very easy to do when changing between manual and auto cars, it’s even easier to do when you’re swapping cars twenty-thirty times a day. It’s not just forgetting you’re driving an auto because the car you were in five minutes before was a manual, it’s forgetting you’re driving a manual after driving an auto five minutes before, pulling up at the site entrance or a set of lights and stalling the car because you just put your foot on the brake. I did the left foot brake in an auto thing at a dealership once, in front of several staff, who all laughed – mainly because all of them had done the exact same thing one time or another.

It’s entirely different when you learn to drive on an auto, you have nothing to un-learn, but going from spending years driving manual ‘boxes, which most do in the U.K., straight onto an auto, like I did when I started driving for BCA Logistics, when you have to pitch up at a dealership, a private address or business address, do an appraisal of a car, or van, that you’ve never even sat in before, sit in it and drive it maybe a couple of hundred miles, drop it off then drive another totally different vehicle, perhaps three times a day, it’s easy to forget what you’re driving.

I drove everything from a Smart to a Maserati Ghibli, an ambulance to an Audi Q7 over roughly two years, now almost as wide a range of cars, but very much shorter distances, you really have to pay attention when swapping between so many different cars and vans during a working day; going from a Toyota Aygo to a LWB Merc Sprinter can take a bit of adjustment at times… 😬

Yeah well I went down there the first day it opened right, and I did a couple of laps, I pulled over, the bloke that runs the thing comes over and said – Oi no professionals. I took my helmet off, I said I’m not a professional. He said – you’re not a profesional? I said – No, he said – well you should be, if I was you I’d take up Formula One, and if you drive like that you’d probably be the best in the country! I said – I’m not interested I’m making shit loads out of computers.

Love that video. Especially the kid riding it!

On a public road:

Blipshifts = ok

Heel/toe = okaaaay … watch you don’t catch up the next car

Left foot braking = you’d better know what you’re doing !

Remember that most competition cars (especially in the olden days) didn’t have servo assisted brakes so left foot braking is a LOT easier.. neither of my track cars have a servo and I’m still shit at it 🙂

Not being an arse, but why would this be a thing?

Basically…….