| It's not about wear, it's about security and controlling your car... When you're using your brakes you can't control your car nearly as well. In case of emergency it makes a huge difference. You've got to control your brakes and turn the steering wheel. If you release your foot from the brakes the car will surge forward as it is not limited by the transmission. Plus water, snow or ice downhill with brakes = danger, very easy to lose control of the car. Again if you're limited by the transmission it's a non- issue. Plus it makes your brakes hot, which makes them less efficient in case of emergency (I think). Your transmission should always be the limiting factor of your speed, period. That's it's job, to determine the speed of the car.
The brakes are only here for when you couldn't downshift fast enough and you're going to hit something if you don't stop the car.
That's what my instructor taught me, and repeated again and again. When driving I sometimes see people braking all over the place, most of the time they also have strange trajectories, and are not easily predictable. I pass them as soon as I can. And yes I use a stick, never used an automatic in my whole life in fact.
I don't think it teaches you anything about the mechanics of the car as i know mostly nothing about that. But I'm pretty sure you "feel" the car much more. I'm nearly certain the aforementioned brakers are mostly automatic drivers (pretty rare in my country as most people despise automatics.) |