I recently gave a team mate a lift to the rink, and discovered that the hand brake is on the passenger side of the central area, hence I was rubbing his leg whenever I needed to use the hand brake. Very embarrassing.

Our Jazz has the handbrake over to the left but never found it an issue, even with larger passengers. Was your team mate "man-spreading"?! :-)

If Peugeots can oblige by having the handbrake centrally, why on earth can't they do something with the fusebox on RHD cars so that it doesn't take up half the glovebox?

The answer must be to design everything dead centre. Three-person bench seat, driver in the middle ....

But you haven't found the position of the handbrake a problem before now, after a year or so with the Polo?

This lad was not exactly lightweight ...

Perhaps the car has the brake handle on the driver's side (from the point of view of Europeans) to cope with Bavarian passengers?

Another reason for having an electronic park brake then - easier to move a switch around than a mechanical linkage.......

...and less likely to break. The clutch cable on our old Passat GL5 was a straight run for LHD, but had to go round a pulley for RHD, thus causing metal fatigue. One by one the wires of the cable would break, until......aaaagh...no clutch...requiring the new skill of clutchless driving without wrecking the gear-box!

I was loaned a 2018 Astra whilst my Golf was in for accident repairs, ( Golf has electronic brake), the Astra brake was so close to the drivers seat it was difficult to use. Golf is back now, what a lovely car in comparison with the Astra. ( not just the brake but general fit, finish and feel.)

Edited by lordwoody on 20/03/2019 at 15:16

Not sure on reliability, but the big problem with electronic handbrakes is hill starts - in some cars the electronic handbrake won't release until you press the foot brake, but then you have to take your foot off the brake to press the throttle and the car rolls backwards.

Of course an automatic solves all these problems - you only need a handbrake when parking on steep hills.

It is on my Peugeot 308, Avant. I'm old-fashioned enough to stick to the brake-neutral-handbrake routine when sitting in traffic, and release the electronic brake manually when moving off (- trusting that that's long-term good practice...), and I find that the hill-hold feature works reassuringly well. Mind, the old mechanical handbrake was so much easier to use; and I never did roll back on hills!

If you buy a car with an electronic parking brake and manual transmission, you need to be sure that it has hill-hold assistance (which is noirmally activated by the footbrake - well, it is on Audis anyway).

No, you don't.

Previous Avensis (2012) of mine had EPB & no hill-hold & was fine. My current Avensis (2017) has EPB & hill-hold - but I never use hill-hold.

Don't know if it is a Toyota-specific thing but there is a slight delay between operating the EPB switch & the actuator releasing the brake which is more than enough time to find the biting point & move off without rolling back.