E-brake abuse....

I know we've been slowing down on the blog but I want to get back into writing about the little, day to day, things that I notice. So this is something we noticed as soon as we arrived. Okay, in your car you have an emergency brake, right? It will be no surprise to you that cars in NZ also have e-brakes. The difference lies in how people use them. We see this situation all the time where cars will come to a stop at a light and you will hear the distinctive 'pop' of the e-brake being engaged. At first we thought nothing of it until we realized that most people are doing this at every stop light. Mind you we observe this for manual and automatic as well as for vehicles waiting on a hill or not. Yeah. I'm assuming that this is something that parents do and their kids pick up on it and start doing it when they learn to drive. Before now I've never seen such flagrant abuse of the e-brake. Why would you need to set it for ten seconds while you wait for a light? It boggles my mind. I have delicately asked my Kiwi friends about this, because I'd like to understand, but they just shrug and say they've never thought about it, it's just what they do. They are also shocked to find out that we don't engage the e-brake when we park a car. We responded that you don't need to unless you are on a hill or if you have a manual transmission and you want to make sure that the car isn't going anywhere. I guess it's just one of those things that differs for no apparent reason. So if you drive in NZ and have the desire to overuse the e-brake - you'll be in good company. :)