First and foremost, we’ll cover the parking brake. The parking brake (handbrake, e-brake, emergency brake) is used to keep a vehicle from moving when parked.
With most modern vehicles, the parking brake doesn’t need to be engaged for a vehicle to remain still. This is because automatic transmissions have a “park” setting on the shifter.
However, the parking brake is a crucial component for manual vehicles because the manual transmission does not have a “park” setting. Instead, drivers need to engage the parking brake before exiting the vehicle.
The parking brake consists of a two components:
Cable that is connected to wheel brakes
A pulling mechanism
Typically, there is a handle in the cabin that you pull up to engage the brake; most handles also feature a button you have to press to unlock the handle.
Recently, though, parking brakes have become less obvious. For example, some vehicles have a round dial that serves as the parking brake; it can even be a single button.