Thread: Death by Land Rover

It is illegal to actually park any vehicle and not put the handbrake on. You can be fined and I have seen the boys in blue do it a couple of times, does not happen often but you can get caught.
I generally always use the hand brake and in gear in a manual, park in an auto. We all do forget from time to time though. Mine site habbits have probablly made it second nature, like putting on a seat belt and not talking on mobile phones while driving (even with hands free kits we must stop to talk).
JamesH, you should move the LC100 to somewhere where she is going to have a real hard time getting it back out.

I learnt from my first car were I parked by putting the car in to park and then applying the hand brake. The parking pawl in the auto was sheared off and the car had to be flatbeded out. (this was on my first drive with my new licence and I was all of 17)

What a lesson

Now I tend to apply the handbrake then let the weight of the car settle on that and then put it into park (if I remember).

I have always tended to keep the handbrake in good order since then.

It was only trying to tap him on the shoulder, to remind him to set the parking brake. Not the poor vehicles fault.
There was a rash of accidents in carparks in Adelaide a few years ago. Due to the bad habit of automatic drivers using both feet at once. Right foot planted on the accelerator, because the left foot is planted on the brake, just in case the car gets out of control, with all the throttle needed to force the poor transmission to move the vehicle.
As for not using the parking brake on an automatic. Shame.
Ditto for shutting down the engine if the transmission (auto) is still in drive.
A friend of mine used to do that, an F100 with a dicky parking brake, and a dicky ignition switch. Standing with the drivers door open he hot wire started the V8.
The look of horror as he realised it was in reverse. It bowled him over, nearly put him under the front right wheel, and almost ran over his 8 year old son behind the F100 on his mini bike.The worst part of the whole episode?
It taught the idiot nothing. He repeated the same fool mistake a couple of weeks later with a shoddy old HQ. This time it dragged him by the leg for 10 or so metres till his jeans ripped.
Just for safety sake, my visits have been curtailed somewhat over the years.

Shorty.

We actually teach people to park using both the handbrake AND leave in gear. In extreme situations, we'll get them to rope it to a tree too...

There's a good reason why we do both and that is for safety incase we've filled the drum with wet clay. As that dries, it'll shrink... therefore releasing the brake!

M

Instinct is to not trust a Land Rover handbrake but having said that I always put it on. Also leave it in gear. Disco three is different again, try trusting the touch of a button instead of wire that you can really rip on hard. ....and then stretch the cable hence the problems next time.