What is life like with your car? Let us know and win £500 in John Lewis vouchers | No thanks

Dead legged

About 20 years ago I was doing auto safety research related to an auto safety-braking device my brother had recently patented in the U.S.A.. One thing we discovered, is that some states instruct drivers to NEVER, EVER use left foot braking when driving an automatic transmission equipped vehicle. It seems they did some left foot braking studies using test groups of 50 drivers, who practiced negotiating road courses with cones and pop-up plastic pedestrians, and it turned out a significant number of them had a sort of left foot/right foot "dyslexia", where their brains tell the wrong foot to take action in an emergency, and found that up to 40% of all drivers may exhibit this dangerous driving trait in an emergency situation. The test subjects were selected at random from typical A/T drivers, and most were typically right foot only A/T drivers. I am not sure how scientifically valid these old state patrol studies were, but they did reveal that many people’s brains may simply be wired incorrectly for two footed driving in A/T equipped vehicles. I suppose that if all they taught was two-footed A/T driving, these findings would be far less of an issue, but the test results were at least interesting. Perhaps there are just a lot of uncoordinated people out there. No surprise.

Asked on 8 May 2010 by D.G., via e-mail

Answered by Honest John
The UK Police Driving School at Hendon and the IAM have a hard line 'lowest common denominator' stance against left foot braking as well. Unfortunately, this attitude kills about 100 people a year in manoeuvring crashes in the UK alone, often wives and children. A few years ago I had the US stats for ‘unintentional acceleration syndrome’ of drivers stamping their right feet on their accelerators instead of their brakes and they were huge. After Toyota's latest statement that there is no way their cars will continue to accelerate, even if the throttle switch sticks, because in that circumstance the throttle module goes into limp mode, I can only conclude that the death crashes we are hearing about are because drivers stamped their right feet on their accelerators instead of their brakes.
Similar questions
Your response to PB's letter on 19 June states that "in an automatic, left-foot braking is the only way to remain in full control of the vehicle at all times". As we manual drivers brake with our right...
I actually know an automatic right foot only driver. Although she didn't kill or injure anyone, she managed to create mayhem and damage six other cars in the Co-op Supermarket car park in Penistone, W....
With regard to using your left foot to brake an automatic, this will probably only work if someone uses the method from their introduction to driving and never drives anything but an auto. Otherwise, it'll...