insight parking brake doesnt ?

[zurk]

i accidently put my insight in reverse this morning. the parking brake was engaged but the car slid back smoothly without engine revving. does the brake auto disengage when you change gears to drive/reverse ?
also when pressing brake and accelerator the insight does not have brake override of accelerator (i.e. rpms dont drop to idle when you push the brake + accl together unlike the new firmware in toyotas).

[numbness4sound]

I drove a short distance with the ebrake on too and the only reason I realized it was the MID warning. I was just driving slowly down my street though, so hopefully when I hit the gas I would have realized it.

I drove this same stretch in my old 98 CRV too with the ebrake on, and it too didn't make it obvious.

[GoMetricToday]

Originally Posted by zurk

i accidently put my insight in reverse this morning. the parking brake was engaged but the car slid back smoothly without engine revving. does the brake auto disengage when you change gears to drive/reverse ?
also when pressing brake and accelerator the insight does not have brake override of accelerator (i.e. rpms dont drop to idle when you push the brake + accl together unlike the new firmware in toyotas).

I haven't tested the accelerator and brake like that. But I would think that the Insight wouldn't need an accelerator override since it is very easy to put the car in Neutral and shut the engine off by turning key. The Prius on the other hand has something akin to a joystick to put the car in gear also the Gen II (assume) and Gen III (does) Prius have the push button start/stop which actually make it harder to turn the car off if it is moving. If the car is in motion the driver would have to push and hold the start/stop button in for at least 3 seconds to kill the engine. When the car is going 145 km/h and careening down a winding highway, a lot can happen in 3 seconds not to mention the panic of knowing your car is out of control.

Honestly I love the simplicity of the Insight and I love that Honda has stuck with a tried and tested way of doing things.

[JimJohnD]

Another thing, with the CVT you can't use the engine-rev as an 'power' indicator like you can with an old style transmission. Depending on the driver requested power the engine will go to a set RPM and the CVT will adjust for the load. That is one display I would really like to have seen on the MID, where in the gear range the CVT is at any given time.

Being able to turn the engine off with a key is the real point. The emergency/parking brake only operates the rear brake shoes. The 'emergency' they were designed for is a lack of normal hydraulic breaking by using a direct cable link. The parking-brake function goes back to keeping manual transmissions parked in neutral from rolling. In standard braking the front brakes do most of the work. I doubt the emergency/parking brake was ever designed to stop a car with a run-away engine.