Almost any mileage between 5k and 50k are possible, some drivers live on the brakes, others barely use the brakes making use of terrain lifting off early and engine braking, town use is heavier, motorway use should see almost no wear at all.

I would concur. Now I'm old I very rarely ever fit a set of pads but in my youth I seemed to always be changing them. Depends almost entirely on how and where you drive.

Almost any mileage between 5k and 50k are possible, some drivers live on the brakes, others barely use the brakes making use of terrain lifting off early and engine braking, town use is heavier, motorway use should see almost no wear at all.

Agreed - I've had a 2 tonne SUV with only half worn brakes at 50,000 miles - being retired I never drive in a rush hour and even the motorway runs are off-peak - I do also tend to leave a larger gap and anticipate better than many. On the other hand, my son drives more agreesively than me, always in heavy traffic, so only gets 20,000 out of a set.

In an Edinburgh MOT context, I found brake pad and brake disk life seemed to be inversely related.

Since, being Yorkshire/Scottish, I drove to minimise fuel consumption, my brake pads lasted a LONG time (can only remember buying them once).

OTOH I had to replace the brake disks for "visible rust" at every MOT.

(Admittedly I usually only MOT'd every 2nd year).

I replaced pads on the Jazz at 30k miles. (greasing all sliders ec)

At 45k miles, the new pads appear half worn. (Brembo)

The front - and rear - disks look shiny, no tram lines and with any luck will last a lot longer..

Must be the mechanic who does the work is semi competent .

Unnecessarily early pad and disc replacement is one of the most remunerative scams of the garage industry.

We had a Golf, at the 30,000 service the garage reported that the pads needed replacing very soon. Having just put new tyres on the front I had seen that there was plenty of life in the pads so I told them I would sort it later.

At the 40,000 mile service they said the same but I had removed a wheel before the service (steel ones so difficult to check unlike some alloys) and knew they were fine but they reported again that the pads were near the end of life.

At 50,000 miles it was exactly the same story, just innored them.

Before the 60,000 mile service I had full set of tyres fitted and got the chap to look at the pads. He said they were good for a few more miles yet. Believe it or not at the service the garage never mentioned the pads.

Changed them at 63,000 miles myself when the weather improved, still on the car 4 years later when we sold it. It was still on the original (non-vented) discs and rear shoes in the drums.

Over my 48 years of motoring I have in truth changed very few sets of brake pads. The most pad hungry was a Golf GTi, front pads lasted about 35,000 miles, front discs 70,000 miles and I changed the well worn rear pads at the same time. The most pad hungry cars dad had were a Renault 12 (14,000 miles) and a Talbot Horizon (about 12,000) miles but in fairness the pads were so soft they never marked the discs.