[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

> ...at the expense of piston rings and other expensive, hard-to-get-to items. And, an educated guess here, probably increased emissions on the overrun.

This seems like a bad tradeoff. Increasing wear on expensive, hard to replace parts (your engine and transmission), so that you can save on relatively inexpensive, easy to replace parts (your brake pads)

[inferiorhuman]

This seems like a bad tradeoff. Increasing wear on expensive, hard to replace parts (your engine and transmission), so that you can save on relatively inexpensive, easy to replace parts (your brake pads)

So that's not actually the tradeoff you're making. More to the point you run a much higher risk of acute failure with brakes than with anything else. When that happens on a downgrade you can't stop. If you were actually increasing wear on piston rings (a laughable argument at best) you might end up needing to rebuild the engine after a few decades.