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To get the best advantage from left-foot braking an automatic, should your foot hover over the brake pedal?
In your Telegraph column you mentioned a test near Berlin that showed that left-foot braking was quicker because of the time lag in transferring the right foot to the brake pedal. Like many drivers, I learned many years ago on a manual car and when I switched to an automatic used the same technique to avoid confusion. But, to get the real advantage of left-foot braking, would you have to keep your foot over the brake pedal? My foot is in the well by the side of the pedal and would take as long to get to the pedal as the right foot. We were always taught not to rest the foot on the clutch pedal to avoid 'drag' and the same would seem to apply to the brake pedal, particularly on a long run.
Asked on 22 October 2010 by CL, via email
Answered by
Honest John
If you are driving the car quickly, yes. You use left-foot braking to set the car up for bends. The technique also enables you to chauffeur the car much more quickly and smoothly than simply by right-foot braking. I just had a particularly jerky ride to the airport in a new S-Class Mercedes because the chauffeur was a right-foot braker. Obviously on a motorway, where you are looking ahead a mile or so, you will have plenty of time to either move your left foot from the floor to the brake or your right foot from the accelerator to the brake.
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