exportmanuk wrote:In normal driving if I was pressing the brake that hard that my weight was also being forced forward then something has already gone terribly wrong, I must be wanting to stop as quickly as possible, the pressure exerted on the pedal would keep me in place[...]If my left foot was against the dead pedal foot rest is would be much the same I would have the same ability to steer in both cases.
Much of what I do revovles around getting people to do an emergency stop and than combine it with steering around an obstacle which is too close to come to a stop before it.
The problem that I see is that under the forces of hard braking and/or cornering, the weight of the driver's body has to be kept from moving about by pushing against the steering wheel. This leaves one with a death grip as well as tensed arms with very little flexibility for extra steering.
Another outlet for the forces acting on the driver's body is the brake pedal itself. I can see how this can be desirable when you start to brake and want to brake as hard as possible, but when you later need to modulate or start to ease off of the brakes, the weight of the body might impede and delay that.
Pressing on the dead pedal relieves this pressure and puts it all on the poor left leg pushing on the floor, without it having any effect on the response of the car, unlike doing the same with any other pedal.
Also, doing it with another pedal, particularly with the brake pedal, isn't quite the same because with the dead pedal and brake pressed you have the bracing of two legs at a relatively wide angle (forming a stable "base" between the thighs) rather than having just one, or two that are close together.
In any instance of hard braking (and this might happen to any driver, AD or whatever) it is important to maintain the ability to steer and modulate brake pressure because it might also prove itself in preventing the following driver from dating your bumper...