Driving with the hand brake pulled happens to everyone once in awhile.
But it's not an indicator that the emergency/hand brake doesn't do its job.
As an example, some high performance cars are enabled with two
brake systems on each rear wheel.
Each wheel has one disk brake for normal driving/braking,
and one minature drum brake, about 1/3 the size of the vanagon rear drum
brake. The mini drum brake is only activated by cable, as emergency/hand brake.
Cars with those brake systems are usually quite powerful.
In a high-speed emergency the little brake drum, cable-activated, would
do almost nothing.
So the designers must have figured it's only necessary as a parking brake.
All modern cars have dual hydraulic brake circuits, so they don't really
need an "emergency" brake. So you might as well call the hand brake
a parking brake, because that's all it really is.
It is possible to stop the vanagon with the hand brake, but it takes quite
awhile.
Harald, '90 westy
http://www.geocities.com/harald_nancy/index.htm

David M. Brodbeck posted:
"One time I drove a rental car twenty miles with the emergency brake on.
Now, that doesn't say much about me, but it REALLY doesn't say much about
the emergency brake.  It should be called the 'emergency
make-the-car-smell-funny lever'." -- Mitch Hedburg.

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