I'll say it very clearly: fuck all auto-on parking brakes.

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All the way to hell. Every single one of them.

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One month ago, I spent a week squealing my bald tires all the way through Andalusia in southern Spain - or the furnace of Europe, with 45 C highs each day. As an absolute car weirdo, I was very much looking forward to seeing which exotic European rental car Hertz was going to provide.

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My booking was for a Peugeot 2008, but when I pulled up to the parking lot shack, I was unceremoniously given the plastic square of misery to a Volkswagen Taos (itself also a plastic square of misery). Unsatisfied, I upgraded to a Renault Kadjar.

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Hell yeah! It may be ubiquitous and fairly generic in Europe, but to a Canadian this was forbidden fruit. Driving a Renault for the first time in my life!

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After giving myself a fourth degree burn from the fake plastic trim on the shifter, the top of the steering wheel, seatbelt buckle and ridiculously, the volume knob, I peered around the interior. Typical Euro-chic, with lots of robust, squishy black plastic, straight edges and decent screens, it was a genuinely nice place to be.

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But it would all be ruined by one tiny little plastic death tab - the electronic parking brake.

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Look, Renault is an impressive car company. They make a line of increasingly charismatic products that stand out in the mass-market segments. Quality is generally good, and prices reasonable with solid tech included. Heck, you must be doing something right if it's YOU who wants to divorce Nissan.

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Yet all of this engineering prowess and design intelligence coalesced around designing a parking brake that automatically turns itself on when you shift back into park, even just for a moment. Who thought of this? Why did they think of this? What is the use case for this ridiculous piece of nannying nonsense? It is literally the most annoying piece of automotive tech I have encountered in the last ten years.

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Bar none.

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See, if you've ever driven in Europe, you'll know that many urban streets were designed for horses and people, not quirky French C-segment SUVs.

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This means plenty of 90 degree corners, bumper-murdering metal or cement bollards separating pedestrians (which I confirm disappear behind the Kadjar's bulbous snoz), and parallel parking spots that are 1.5 inches longer than your car - and no more.

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In short, tons of three-point turns, inching back and forth to fit into spots, peering out of windows to check your distance between ancient Seat Leons and your door. Back and forth, little by little, just trying not to incur the wrath of Hertz Spain and their insurance adjusters.

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The perfect opportunity for the Kadjar's electronic parking brake to engage. Over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. Literally 2,352 times in one week did this occur, adding the same number of steps to the already harrowing experience of parking in old town centers.

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Does Renault not trust their own parking gear ability to hold the car from falling backwards? Yes, some European cities are very hilly, but not hilly enough that a parking gear shouldn't be able to hold it. I get having it come on automatically when you TURN THE CAR OFF, but every two seconds when park is engaged? Absolutely idiotic.

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If I owned this car (which I wouldn't, simply because of this), I would figure out a way to crack the system and manually disable it. Perhaps it has a gear-by-wire system that I'm not familiar with, but that still doesn't justify not figuring some other solution other than this. Especially since many people who are temporarily putting the car into park will keep their foot on the brake, such as parallel parking.

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No wonder the tires on the car were completely bald. They've been turned into the same material as a pool cue ball simply because of the number of times an unfamiliar driver spins the wheels in park, not remembering that the stupid thing engages each time. In eight days and over one thousand miles of driving, I didn't get used to it a single time. Not once. It's just such a finicky, overly sensitive and ridiculously timed feature that ruins the experience of an otherwise pleasant car.

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We can send probes to the outer regions of the solar system. And we can make a BETTER ELECTRONIC PARKING BRAKE.

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Get it together, Renault.

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