Meanwhile, brake lights and running lights are frequently too dim because of an aesthetic obsession with "blacking out" tail lights.
I was definitely not taught this as a US driving student. Is this a UK thing?
114 You MUST NOT use any lights in a way which would dazzle or cause discomfort to other road users, including pedestrians, cyclists and horse riders use front or rear fog lights unless visibility is seriously reduced. You MUST switch them off when visibility improves to avoid dazzling other road users (see Rule 226).
In stationary queues of traffic, drivers should apply the parking brake and, once the following traffic has stopped, take their foot off the footbrake to deactivate the vehicle brake lights. This will minimise glare to road users behind until the traffic moves again.
I’m sure that might have been fine 30 years ago when cars had actual handbrakes. I doubt most folks these days can even find the little switch that activates it. Now it comes off as a bunch of monkey business.
That's definitely not true of all vehicles. I helped a friend recently find hers; she'd never used it, didn't even know it existed. And I've never used it on rental cars.
Certainly when I've been stopped on a hill with someone directly on my bumper I've used the hand brake, but that's vanishingly rare for me (probably because I live in a very flat part of the country).
Some do, some don't. Most I've driven try to replicate the bug in ICE automatics that causes the car to creep when your foot's not on the brake.
manual ICE cars (especially diesels) can be held on the clutch just under the 'biting point'
I, too, love the smell of burning clutch plates. Use the brake, that's what it's there for.
Part of how the torque converter works; a feature which prevents the vehicle from rolling backwards on a hill, not a bug.
By learning to drive a manual? Pardon the snark, but that technique should be reserved for severely steep hills, otherwise heel-toe or just be quick on the pedals. I live in the Seattle area, where you either learn to drive a manual on hills, or you get a punch card from the transmission shop for clutch replacements. Even someplace like going up the hill from 1st and Madison (picking a random, extremely hilly intersection in Seattle), I'll roll back maybe six inches. I'm nothing special, my wife does the same thing. And if you live around Seattle and you sit six inches off someone's rear bumper on a hill, that's a "you" problem when they roll back on you.
That only applies for manual/stick shift vehicles. Most of the US drives automatic transmissions, and you don't have to use the hand brake to start on an uphill slope with an automatic transmission.
You sit there with the gearbox in neutral and your left foot off the clutch (or in gear and on the clutch if green light imminent) with your right foot on the brake.
In gear, clutch to biting point (which will prevent rolling backward), right foot off the brake and then gradually on the accelerator while you let off the clutch pedal with your left foot.
The handbrake literally never enters into it, and the vehicle never rolls back.
That is... incorrect.