I was a little bit slow off the mark this morning. Mr C left the house for work earlier than usual because he had to catch an early train to London for a meeting. The lack of movement in the house and the fact that the radio’s Breakfast Show had a different presenter than normal which led to me to sleeping through the alarm. I managed to recover the lost time but as I was leaving the house I heard the phone ring. I realised that it was my mum so I answered the phone.
She sounded flustered and said, ‘Oh you’re still at home! I have a sorry tale to tell you.’ My heart had that sinking feeling as I wondered what she was about to tell me. She went on to say that Mr C’s car had rolled off her drive (she lives near the railway station) coming to rest against the wall across the road and that the car’s bumper was hanging off. Not exactly good news, but not exactly bad news either; my heart resumed its normal position. She asked me to bring the spare key so that I could move the car. I went round straight after I had phoned work to let them know I would be late.
I drove to my Mum’s house and was pleasantly surprised to see that although the car was at a jaunty angle, it was taking up no more room than other cars that park on the side of the road. As I walked up my mum’s drive I saw a man coming out of the property behind the wall and we met on mum’s drive. I told him that I had the key to move the car but was not sure if I knew how to move the car because I had never driven it and it has a silly automatic handbrake and a quirky way of starting! I have often quipped with Mr C that his car is a gadget and not a car.
We went over to the car and I unlocked it. We both pondered the handbrake and decided we didn’t know how to work it… We considered various options and I elected to phone Mr C but his phone went to voicemail. The gentleman assistant suggested that I leave the car in neutral and he would push it back onto the driveway if I would steer the car. Whilst doing this we encountered two problems at the same time… The steering lock was on (even though the key was in the ignition) so it was hard to line up the car with the drive and, once we got the car to the curb, it started to roll backwards. I was worried that it might knock my gentleman assistant over so I applied the foot brake. Now that the car was away from the wall I tried to start the engine so I could drive it and in the process managed only to activate the automatic handbrake. No matter what I tried the handbrake would not turn off and the engine would not start up!
By now the car was blocking the road and another man had stopped to assist. He looked at the handbrake and shook his head. At this point Mr C rang back and I was able to ask him to tell me how to get the car started. He told me the exact same procedure that I had just tried and the car started like a dream… Then he gave instructions for the handbrake and I found that I had been doing the right thing but for some reason it hadn’t worked. At this point I said I would call him back when the car was safely on mum’s drive. By this time a lady had also come to assist. She mentioned that her husband had an older model of the same car and that its automatic handbrake had failed on more than one occasion… I left the car in first gear and mum put bricks behind the rear wheels before I left for work.
The really puzzling thing is that my mums drive is level which means some form of manual intervention, accidental or deliberate, must have set the vehicle in motion…
One of those days alright. My goodness what a palava. It reminds me of an RAF plane inbound to Columbo from Singapore. He called the airfield from 200 miles out on a direct track for the runway. He called at regular intervals and was each time cleared in. At last he reached five miles from touchdown and was cleared to land. But at the last minute he had to overshoot. He called the tower, quite upset…”You cleared me to land but there is a C130 on the runway”. The Sri Lankan controller replied…” Oh dear. Another day like monday”.
LOL
It is a good job the pilot was alert otherwise that would have spoiled the start to the week for many people!!
How late for work were you?
I don’t understand, it seems he has an automatic handbrake in a gear box? I only drive automatics. Makes everything much easier.
LOL @ Amfy.
I have an automatic. It will not start – or even roll along / away – when in ‘park’.
When the ignition is turned off the handbrake should automatically have engaged even if Mr C had failed to turn it off.
I keep telling him he needs a real car like mine
He does like my car, it has everything a car needs 
I have driven autos all my life.As is the reverse case to N America,Britain’s cars are mainly gearboxes, thus a bigger deal is made of the handbrake than need be. On automatics the braking system is disabled when the car is turned off and the handbrake is(over here) considered the emergency brake, only to be used whilst driving, should the automatic brakes fail( or if parked on a sharp incline/decline). Sounds more like Mr C did not put it into park. I did that once -and even though the car was turned off-it began to roll down a hill slowly.But that is because I had not ‘locked’ the brakes by putting it into park.
On this car it is the button I refer to as the handbrake that needs to be activated when the car is parked. This model of car is a manual with some fancy features including the button that on the day, everyone frowned at when they came to help me LOL.
I currently work Flexi hours and arrived 40 minutes after I should have clocked. It is not a problem to the company I work for because I already had a few hours in hand and even after the late start I still have some time in hand.
Yes he does have an automatic handbrake and gear box which is a good job. I have never driven an automatic car. The real problem is the handbrake is quirky. I had actually figured out how to work it but it just wasn’t playing!!
Wow! What a morning and an incredible story. That answers a question I had on the weekend about automatic handbrakes. I was wondering if they could be trusted, but as you say, they can’t!
Wiggia sums up the automatic handbrake in his comment below. It is the reason that I have never driven Mr C’s car before. It has always been quirky, especially when he is trying to back off the drive. It sometimes sticks as it did when I got the car stuck in the middle of the trying to get it on to my mum’s drive.
Cherrie, welcome to the world of the electric handbrake the most pointless and potentialy expensive add on now being fitted to ever more cars, including mine.
As with all electronics in motor vehicles they are the cause in these days of most vehicle malfunctions and this is no more than another addition to the list, when the electric motor that applies the brake pads fails as it eventually will (there are already many anecdotes in the motor world) mainly because the electric motor is in the wheel arch or similar and eventually succumbs to water ingress leaving you with no parking brake, favoured by the Germans and now sadly everyone else as another source of income.
Sadly my second choice of new car at the time, Japanese also had the damned thing fitted, what is so difficult about a manual handbrake ?
I much preferred cars when they didn’t rely on electronics. Even I who am not mechanically minded knew how to change spark plugs and top up the battery when it was playing up. On one particularly temperamental car I had to stop the car regularly (due to it misfiring) to remove and clear the carburetor jets then replace them so that I could resume on the journey.
Fast forward to a more modern car relying on electrics. My Nissan Micra failed not once but twice in 3.5 years due to the crankshaft sensor failing (causing the car to misfire and lose power when the engine was warm). The second occurrence happened when I was holidaying in Northumberland. The car failed completely as I drew up next to the Nissan dealer and I had to leave ‘not exactly’ parked at a jaunty angle by the side of the road. On this occasion the dealership were excellent, the cannibalised a part out of one of the show cars to get the car working because they knew we were on holiday and wouldn’t want to wait for the part to be ordered in.
This experience prompted me to change my car to the one I still have now. It has a manual handbrake
They do not malfunction as long as the emergency cable for the handbrake is not overused/mishandled(it is not meant to be used daily as it is considered a ‘back-up’ emergency braking system in an automatic,not a daily additional one). Daily use however would stretch or snap the cable,loosening it.In automatics just turn the car off, put in park to lock wheel base and leave the handbrake alone. Then when an emergency arises(like water in your electric braking system say,) it is there as a back up safety feature.
Europeans do not ‘get’ automatics yet,sadly.And they all use handbrakes the way they would in a gearbox.
There are no “alternative” braking systems to the electric handbrake in manual cars, hence my comment, electric braking systems when they fail in a manual car leave you only with the footbrake and apart from their propensity to only work when used in the prescribed fashion ie when dabbing the footbrake at a certain pressure they also leave you with no control on hill starts or similar, they are in effect pointless.
Many automatic gearboxed cars also use electronic braking and have no manual handbrake just a footoperated parking brake, what goes on in the states I have no idea.
Your life is one adventure after another, Cherie.
And some of those adventures are more welcome than others
Sorry to hear of this mishap, I like my cars simple.
The header is unusual, no doubt a program or something for taking well used words from your text … very effective.
I like my cars simple too
I tell Mr C that he doesn’t have a car he has a gadget 
The image is created by Wordle. For this one I just copied the blog post into the ‘bunch of text box’ I then clicked randomize until I got an image I was happy with. There are options at the top of the page to fine tune the image result. When I was happy with it I did a screen shot and saved it as a JPEG.
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