If you’ve spent any time behind the wheel of a car, you’ve probably seen someone place their automatic vehicle into the “Park” position while waiting at a stoplight. While not typical, I’ve witnessed this phenomenon countless times over my years of driving.
Having pretty much always driven manual cars (save for press vehicle loaners and rentals), I never really understood why people did this. That is, until recently, when I bought my first automatic car, my 2008 Land Rover Range Rover.
Now I get it. I’m not ashamed to admit I place my car in Park at stoplights all the time. Logic suggests this is dumb for several reasons, yet I keep doing it. Let me explain myself.
Yeah, It’s Bad, I Know
While not illegal, putting your car in Park while stationary on an active roadway opens you up to a multitude of safety risks. If you need to quickly move out of the way because a car is barrelling towards you at high speed, you no longer have to simply lift the brake—you have to put your foot on the brake and shift the car into Drive to get moving, wasting precious moments.
Placing your car in park also signals to other drivers that your foot isn’t on the brake, which, to someone behind you not paying attention, could suggest your car is moving forward, causing them to roll forward and rear-end you. The act of shifting to Park and back to Drive might also briefly command your reverse lights to activate, further confusing other motorists. So, officially, I recommend that no one put their car in Park at a stoplight.
There’s also the possibility that doing this stoplight-parking could put unnecessary wear on some transmission components, like the linkage and shift forks. This wear is incredibly minor, of course—gearboxes are designed to shift, after all. But over the course of thousands of stoplights, it’ll make some difference. At the same time, the beauty of torque converters means you don’t have to worry about putting extra wear on the transmission by holding the brake to keep the car stationary, at least not for a minute at a time. So there’s no strong argument that shifting to Park avoids extra wear on the gearbox, save for very specific circumstances.
So … Why?
On paper, going through the effort of shifting into Park only to have to put your foot back on the brake and shift back to Drive after 45 seconds to maybe a minute of sitting doesn’t even seem worth the trouble. For me, though, those series of movements have become second nature.
Roll to a stop at a stoplight, flip the transmission into Park, and relax. I’ve got it down to a science, so it only takes me about half a second to get from stopped to fully in park. Then, I’m able to take my foot off the brake and give my legs (and the rest of my body) some time to stretch out and relax. It’s during these moments that I can truly appreciate the Range Rover’s comfy captain’s chairs.
To me, that combined full second of shifting work is worth the tradeoff. When I drive, it’s usually only for longer trips (at least an hour), so having those tiny breaks to briefly disconnect from the car is nice. Doing this in New York City, where I live, is especially easy because I can keep an eye on the countdown clocks for the pedestrian crosswalks to know exactly when the light will turn green. Having these countdowns is what really makes shifting into Park worth it. Without them, it’s more of a guessing game of when the light will turn green, which is more stressful than relaxing.
Of course, I’m always keeping my eyes on my mirrors for emergency vehicles—I usually only pull this move when I’m boxed in by other cars in heavy traffic. The only issue I’ve encountered with this method, so far, is when someone ahead of me decides to ease forward to fill a gap in the line of cars waiting for the red light. In this case, I usually just switch my car back into Drive prematurely, move forward so as not to make everyone behind me angry, and keep my foot on the brake for the remainder of the light cycle.
The Internet Has Mixed (But Mostly Negative) Opinions
When I pitched this story, most of The Autopian staff were pretty surprised, and not one staffer seemed to take my side. Harsh, but fair. I figured I might find someone on the great big internet who feels the same way I do about this topic, but most people seem to take the more rational route.
Friend of The Autopian Kristen Lee wrote in 2016 about how she was baffled by why people put their cars into Park at stoplights, mentioning that most of her colleagues were equally as confused by such a move. The only holdout, interestingly, was our very own David Tracy, who said, at the time, he keeps at least one of his cars in neutral:
“Because the car’s got too much torque and too little brakes,” he explained matter-of-factly. “Requires too much pressure at long stop lights. Very annoying.”
That sounds like a very specific problem, but it turns out going to neutral isn’t a niche solution for some people. This 2014 thread on the topic from the BobIsTheOilGuy.com forum had several people advocating for switching to Neutral and continuing to hold the brakes at stoplights. These folks argue that having the car in Neutral will allow it to roll forward in case of a rear-end impact, reducing overall strain on occupants, which is a fair assumption.
The great minds of Reddit seem to think shifting into Park is a bad idea. Back in 2019, someone on the /r/Driving Subreddit asked whether it would be fine to shift into Park at stoplights, and was met with a whole bunch of “No.”
This Phenomenon Might Soon Disappear Anyway
Thanks to the advent of modern braking tech, this is a solved issue. Lots of new cars have a function called Brake Hold, which is a system that, as you might be able to tell from the name, holds the brakes for you when you come to a stop. This way, you can lift your foot off the brake and relax as much as you want, without having to shift out of Drive. All you have to do to get moving is press the accelerator pedal. The system registers the accelerator input and releases the brakes, freeing you to drive normally.
As the average age of cars on the road increases, more cars will have this feature onboard, which means fewer weirdos like me will have to resort to moving their gear selector from Drive to Park and back just for that tiny hit of relief. I’ll be the first to admit I get a little sad when I see a new press car I’m testing doesn’t have a brake hold button. But more and more these days, the brake hold function is standard.
I’m not expecting many people to come to my defense here, as the cons obviously outweigh the pros. But to all who shift into Park at stoplights, I see you. And I understand you.
Top graphic images: Brian Silvestro
Can’t park here, mate.
The function you’re looking for is called ‘neutral’.
My new car has a HOLD button. I’ll never trust it the way I trust putting it in Park, but it’s really convenient.
The way the e-parking brake goes in and out of use listening to the car’s software, however, makes me so sad. I feel real loss.
I find 80s era GM cars, and maybe others, sometimes idle too fast and really strain against the brakes. But neutral is really the answer here, not park.
Also, I don’t like autos that require you to press the brake to shift in or out of neutral. That’s the main advantage of neutral, you should be able to drop in and out of it easily in this situation.
My friend’s mom had a Dodge Neon that if you let your foot off the brake, would accelerate to about 30 mph without touching the gas.
My 94 Thunderbird was like that. I remember when ‘ghost riding the whip’ was popular thinking about how fast it would get away from me.
If you have an old car that runs shitty, putting in neutral or park at a stop sign relieves you from having to hear the sputtering struggle of the miserable engine. Had a 1967 ford pickup that never ran right, especially at idle so I got in that habit for a few years.
I wish you had actually addressed why you do this, but you don’t really.
You even have a very long “So … Why?” section, but that section is only justifying that it’s easy, and you do not really discuss why. Buried in there there is only one-half of a sentence in this entire piece that actually addresses why. Which is… “having those tiny breaks to briefly disconnect from the car is nice.”
IMHO, if you need to disconnect while driving, then pull over and stop. Or don’t drive. Or get a Tesla which can run over pedestrians all by itself without your engagement. Or just drive while also looking down at your cell-phone, like any normal well adjusted human. 🙂
You’re making the very outlandish assumption that I am a normal, well-adjusted human
Well, I also implied that looking down at a cell-phone while driving was normal and well-adjusted.
So I hope it’s clear that I think very little of “normal” human behavior.
It is rarely something to aspire to. So good job on not being normal!
Except for that parking-at-lights thing. Don’t do that.
In the MB GLC300, you just push and hold the brake pedal twice down at a light or in traffic, the HOLD light comes on and you just wait to press the gas. That is wonderful, there if I want to use it and just push + hold when I want to stretch that right foot out.
The Nissan Rogue is a button on the dash that doesn’t feel as well integrated.
I bump the shifter to neutral on my K3500 diesel so I don’t have to stand on the brake pedal.
I know a guy who had a manual transmission and used to sit at stoplights with the car in gear and the clutch down. Eventually wore out the throwout bearing.
On the other hand, I know that this is the “proper” way, but I always just hold it in 1st with the clutch down ready to go, with no negative effects.
I’ve had two manual transmission cars where I was the sole driver.
The first made it 210k miles before needing it’s first clutch replacement (but not a new throw-out bearing), and I sold it at 250k miles still going strong.
My current car is at 203k miles, still on its original clutch, and absolutely no bearing issues.
So…. I think I’m going to just keep my foot on the clutch. I obviously enjoy the engagement of a manual, but doubling foot/hand shift motions every time I stop, would be, in my experience, no benefit.
Yeah, I’ve never had an issue keeping my foot on the clutch, either, and I’m ready to launch the moment the light turns green.
And yet we got over 750K on our Toyota trucks with 5 speed manual’s doing this without issue…wondering why.
Being in need of two total knee replacements will do that to you.
I have no opinion on this and am completely not shocked that many many people do. . .
My truck does not have “park”.
I just push in the clutch and usually leave it in first gear.
Once in a while, while at a fast-food drive-up window, I’ll put it in neutral and let out the clutch just to hear the transmission make a different noise. 🙂
Having seen people accidentally shift to R and not notice.
But I suppose some people just want to see the world burn.
The only problem with brake hold is when you forget to turn it off before pulling up to the conveyor belt.
This is just as bad as that dipshit over at The Other Site who drove around with his high beams on for months because he was too lazy and/or stupid to replace a burned-out low beam headlight bulb. That dude got roasted and so should you.
OMFG, this.
I’m so sorry that I can only upvote this once.
I remember that one. The worst part was that I don’t think it was meant to be blatant rage-bait like this piece is. I think that dude really was so stupid as to think it was not a big deal, and in fact proud of himself.
This isn’t anywhere near as bad as that.
Our author here literally acknowledges he is causing a safety hazard on the road because he’s lazy.
It’s kinda the same thing?
He’s parking at a red light in bumper to bumper traffic on low speed streets where there’s a timer for the light change visible in front of him.
It’s sort of weird that he seems to do it frequently? It seems like the benefits are limited at best? But it’s hard to argue that putting your car in park when boxed in on all sides results in a safety hazard.
This is just as stupid, and just as lazy, but I’ll concede it is not as dangerous if it is within that context, even if he only mentions that context as a small aside in one sentence rather than in the headline or lede where it should have been.
I will also say that this is a worrying trend with this author – putting up something controversial to farm clicks and comments. I’m getting strong german lighting vibes and don’t like it one bit. The Autopian can and does put out better content than this. It doesn’t need rage bait.
Nearly every writer here has put out a controversial bad take, but I see it less as click bait, and more as airing out their flaws. Every writer here has at least one objectively bad driving habit as if we all look into the mirror, we all do.
I don’t think the author is going to claim that this is Peabody award level work here. But I’m sure DT and Torch want the writers here to engage us with whatever driving related content comes to mind.
I dont know, I guess for ragebait to succeed conceptually, you have to be able to jump to conclusions from the headline and not be bothered to read or consider the nuance. It takes two to tango.
So you’re saying that writing headlines with the format of “I do this controversial thing, fight me” is only click/rage bait if the readers don’t look for the “nuance” within the article first?
I always thought the “bait” part was that it manipulated people into reading the article because of the intentionally written headline. Why would it be called clickbait if you already clicked and read it before being baited?
Eh, I guess I should have used rage bait both times. I get that the headline is clickbait-y.
I don’t know, I just feel like many of the reactions to this post are somehow even more sensationalized than the post itself. Especially the idea that this was even a percentage as bad as the high beams guy. That was genuinely the worst take I’ve ever seen on an auto enthusiast site.
You should be hung, drawn, and quartered with no remorse. May God have mercy on your soul.
But then my autostart/stop wouldn’t work! And I accept that I’m the only one, but I like that feature.
I’ll admit, I kind of like it, too. But only one of our 6 vehicles has it, and we only put about 2700 miles a year on that one.
You’re not the only one.
One of my cars turns the ASS light on when it’s disabled, and the other turns the light off when it’s disabled. Now I get them mixed up and turn it off when I want it on and accidentally leave it on when I want it off. I wish I could just have consistent ASS lights.
I think P is a bad idea. N is less so but still wouldn’t do it for red lights. Long drive-thru lines, maybe.
Btw. some non-US market automatic transmissions switch to N automatically when stopped, presumably to save a bit of fuel or emissions.
It’s a weird feeling being in D yet not creeping forward, if you aren’t used to it.
For example the Vectra C did this. But you still had to hold the brake, if you pulled your foot off, it would start to creep forward.
Many modern auto transmissions switch to neutral automatically when the vehicle is stopped since it reduces load on the engine and thus fuel consumption (the input shaft can spin freely, which allows the torque converter to freewheel with the engine speed instead of multiplying torque against a fixed input).
Otherwise, switching to neutral to allow the car to “roll forward” in an impact is pretty meaningless – any impact big enough for it to make a difference in the initial impact load is big enough to make the tires skid anyway, and I’d be worried that there’s more risk of a second impact from hitting something in front of you if you’re in neutral with your foot off the brake than in drive with it on the brake.
Park seems especially silly though – any sizable impact will shear the park pawl in the transmission and then its just like being in neutral, except with the added confusion of no brake lights making that rear ending more likely, and the flash through neutral to scare the driver in the car behind you when going back to drive.
At Allison we made this an optional feature for commercial automatics. Basically just a software feature enabled by calibration. Similarly if the brake pedal switch becomes disengaged it shifts from N back to D.
These days, unless you’re at the front of the line at the light, you’ll likely have half the light cycle to shift again. It is getting SO bad with people sitting at the front of the line at a light reading their phones and missing half the light cycles. It’s become so ubiquitous that I wonder if there are traffic engineering research papers on timing stoplights in the era of smartphones. Yes, I’m type A, but I get irrationally angry with folks who believe it is okay that their phone usage might cause people behind them to wait another light cycle for no good reason. Oh, and get off my lawn.
This would piss me off no end. Bad enough that people with cars aren’t willing to spend a few dollars for a phone mount. Worse yet are the people in Teslas and other ‘electro-wockel’ cars that don’t link their phone to the car for hands-free use.
I’m right there with you, get off my lawn included and I’m only 36. I drive a truck so I can usually see when someone is diddling on their phone in front of me. And they get full horn if the light turns green and they are still looking down, because fuck that shit. Of course then I’m usually watching them swerve between the lines (or over) while driving for the same reason. I just note the license plate and back off in case they hit something.
My grandfather would do this. He wore out transmissions faster than brakes.
Only time mine goes in park while in traffic is at a train crossing.
You’ll do this until a failure occurs in the interlock system which will leave you unable to shift out of park. You’ll be that guy, stuck in Park at a green light. You drive a Range Rover. This sort of failure is bound to happen sometime.
Already waiting for that article…
Freaky coincidence alert: Was just in New York yesterday and my cab driver did this while driving me through Manhattan. And I thought it was weird. He was also VERY fast with it and he was very good at diving through Manhattan traffic, so it never really disrupted things, but I still found it weird. The cab was a Toyota Sienna, btw, and it had a traditional shifter mounted in the dash.
Even after seeing it in action, I don’t think I can take your side on this one. Especially since you’ve made the hand motion something you do by rote. Reverse is just one little click away from Park. That’s a mistake you only need to make one time for it to be a huge problem. And I also freak out whenever I see the car in front of me flash its reverse lights.
I guess I sympathize with people doing this in Manhattan. We got honked at incessantly because we stopped… for a red light. Full of traffic. With no chance of moving. It was definitely an authentic New York experience, so I can see why a New York would want to throw it in Park for a moment of Zen.
I try to get my feet off the pedals for long lights whenever I can.
I’ve got 4 cars in the household
Across all 4, none would blink the reverse lights to put it in park, thankfully. But I don’t want to go that far.
I think with the important context of 1–bumper-to-bumper traffic, and 2–at stops with pedestrian timers visible…that actually sounds okay to me. In any other circumstance I’d say “bad idea,” but those are two very good mitigators.
If I push the brake pedal in my Prius v all the way down, it holds the brake for 3 seconds or until I push the gas, whichever comes first. But it describes that as a hill hold assist, which makes more sense. I’ve never experienced “auto hold.”
When I spent some time in Colombia, I noticed that manual transmission vehicles were the default, this included trucks and busses. However, several newer Ubers I rode in were automatics. These drivers of automatics still put their vehicles in neutral (not park like you) at stop lights, I suspect out of habit. Colombia also had the added benefit of the stop lights warning drivers they were about to turn green by illuminating the yellow light alongside the red light. This gave everyone time to shift into gear regardless of if one was driving a stick or an auto. Also, the Dacia Duster was everywhere down there.
It’s funny, in Iceland they also have yellow before green, which I appreciate. And there are also Dacia Dusters everywhere, which I also appreciate.
Whether you like it or not, the Dacia Duster is probably the best car for your needs.
Yours are the actions of a man who have driven manuals all their life. It’s like you adapted the process of throwing a stick into neutral to an automatic. I drive half sticks, half autos and have no desire to fuss with the autos at a stop light. It’s one of the few benefits of driving an auto.
Huh, didn’t even think of this but it sounds like it might be spot on
Ha! It was the way you tossed it into park in the “So why?” gif. Looks just like how I’d throw a stick into neutral. Anyway, I enjoyed the article!
I sometimes shift to neutral and pull the parking brake during long waits, that counts the same, since it doesn’t have a Park setting
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