My experience of them is that they work quite well but can have foibles, but then my work (transporter driver) meant the cars were at angles far in excess of what most people will encounter.

Some could have unwanted release triggered by the acute angle the car was at when started, rare but it did happen, again most unlikely that anyone would encounter such a thing in normal driving but should be kept in mind.

Its another dumbing down of driving, great for those who can't drive and never will, but not needed by those who can drive.

My main objection though is unecessary complication and obvious serious expense to put something right in time that no competent driver asked for.

I have no objection to the simple ball bearing or pendulum type of hill hold device as found on Subarus and some others, little to go wrong there.

Indeed a hill hold facility could arguably be desirable with an automated manual or twin clutch gearbox designs where roll back whilst the gearbox sorts itself out is a problem.

For me its not really a problem, i won't be buying an automated manual of however many clutches and i won't be buying a car with an electric handbrake either.

edit...some lorries have auto hill hold function now, and most new large lorries have automated manual satan boxes too, one particular brand will release the hill hold about a second before the gearbox has woken up, very useful, i turn the feature off.

Edited by gordonbennet on 17/03/2013 at 10:16

If you don't like them don't buy one. Try a car fitted with them and make your own mind up. Plenty of cars still on the market with normal handbrakes.

Our car has a conventional handbrake but is fitted with hill start assist (HSA). It is a very usefull feature but for it to work the hill needs to be steeper than a certain gradient and you need to stop with a certain amount of braking, just rolling up to the car in front and then holding it on the foot brake results in no HSA which can be a surprise if you are expecting it.