Between gears my car has to do that after a cold start. It will rev quite high and not shift unless I let off and let it rest at its normal shifting point. But not all automatics I've driven are like this.
@Vykos: Even if handbrake uses the rear (because I am pretty sure it doesn't use the front on most cars), I say again, I am trying to save my front brakes from damage, I apply my handbrake (not fully), and apply light pressure to foot pedal. It's a whole lot better than plainly using the foot pedal to slow down, it was metal on metal at that point for the FRONTS. And I'm not cranked fully on the handbrake, I never was. And actually using the front brake would take a while to slow down, so the handbrake helped. The rears are the only thing that can help me stop, so why not?
yeah ive done that before, turned the key 1 too far and jumped forward about 3 feet, ended up about half an inch from the car parked in front. wasnt allowed in the drivers seat of the car for a few years after that.
from what i understand, automatics just use a far more complex way to shift gears and you can never be sure what gear the car will use. There isn't a simple sure-fire way to choose a gear, like in a manual. For different automatics you need to use different methods, depending on temperature, too.
and you tout this as "simpler" and less risky?
ha
addition: a car is not a device that is suited well for automations like this. in the end, you have to go through loops to override the automation, in order to do things that are way simpler with a manual. And all this for what? For not having to shift gears? You still have to do that, albeit the car gets involved and you have to not only change the gear (indirectly) but keep in mind that the car may decide to do something too about the gears.
using the handbrake destabilizes the car completely. It's like shifting the brakebias to rear, which will cause you in some situation to loose the car. It's a stupid thing. Use your auto-gear stick to choose a lower gear....
I had one car that had poor brake balance, so I pretensioned handbrake to get brake balance to more rearward, well it was better for while, but really stupid idea, as in one situation rear end started to slide and because there was little handbrake applied there was no way to gain control
Well, learnt something again then
My mom drove about two miles with the handbrake all the way up. Seriously, how can you not tell that the handbrake is applied? There's a big red light on the dash that says BRAKES even if you cant feel the slowness lol
Ok, since you posted this, it's story time for me. The girl I was seeing just out of high school had a married sister who lived in New Jersey. Her husband had a 69 Mustang Mach 1 with a rare for that year 351 Cleveland, rebuilt and built up to about 500 hp. They were moving to Guam, so they brought all the cars and bikes over here to PA to store them for a few years. They were bringing the Mustang and the Mitsubishi Eclipse over and were gabbing on 2-way radios. On the way, the Mustang broke down (imagine that, a Found On Road Dead, LOL). I don't remember what it was, but it was quite a car other than that breakdown. So, somewhere just out of their town in New Jersey, they grabbed a motel room and waited for the repair. The next day they carried on their way, about a 600 mile trip. The whole time, Cliff (the husband) is complaining on the radio on how sluggish the thing was. Didn't have any power or getup and go, for 500hp. After 600 miles and just about half a mile from my girlfriends place, he finally noticed that the parking brake was on. In those cars, it wasn't a hand brake, but a foot pedal on the floor. He never used the parking brake himself, so didn't notice that the mechanic did. 600 miles of complaining there was something wrong with no power and it was the parking brake.
Oh yea, when they finally arrived, he let us know by cruising past the house laying a dual positraction patch for about half a mile down the road filling the valley with thick smoke. Gotta love the old American musclecars .
Have you ever driven with the handbrake cranked about halfway? It doesn't destablize your car unless you crank it ALL THE WAY Vykos illepall Read my post, or get a better handbrake
If you turn and brake and your handbrake is half way pulled up, brake balance will be more rearward and rear will lock up much easier than without handbrake being up, in some cases even 3-4 clicks is enough to upset the car during such manouver.
So theorically speaking (which happened to be more than theory in my case) it does destabilize car. However in normal driving conditions it does not, however in traffic it is best to be prepared to impossible, there is so many hole heads on roads that it is just matter of time when something happens.
tweaker, you should be able to tell when your pads are wearing down and therefore never have to drive with the pads "metal to metal" as you say.
driving a car with brakes like these, what were you thinking? ok so you found a way to brake when downhill... what would you do if for some reason you had to brake for an emergency?
The pads come with a 'warning' tab on them and you will hear that rubbing to warn you about their condition. Aparently the pads on my front did not have these, so I was really driving without knowing much. And I normally would feel the difference of good brakes versus terrible brakes, but it never occured to me that they were worn (or close to it). I take care of the car, and I was kind of shocked about the whole previous pad situation (and I never had those put on the car, since I bought the car used).
If your handbrake is fully engaged at 4 clicks, that is understandable, but it is different for many cars I've driven. Namely most Japanese cars really require the e-brake to be really far up. 4 clicks is barely on for me. Different for lotsa cars
Heh, my friend had once this crap car with everything failing apart. It was few years ago in the summer. The car was in pretty bad shape, not dangerous but certainly it didn't have many years left, if not a full year even. He noticed that the brakes were there no more, I'm not sure whether he lost them by surprize or did the brakes just gradually fail. The onlybrakes in the car was the hand brake . Well, he didn't drive that much so he didn't fix it. He drove about a week with (Mitsubishi Colt btw.) those brakes, mostly going to work and back. I remember sitting on the passengers seat few times (didn't have car back then) and I always tried to persuade him to fix the brakes. "Beatiful wheather isn't it", he replied or something similar, a joke, of course. He didn't really drive too fast and there was not much traffic on the mornings anyway... There was this one longish corner on the way o work where you need to brake and turn into the corner at the same time (a junction at the end of the long corner) and it was pretty fun see him shifting down almost to redline and finally stopping the car with the handbrake with slight oversteer. Wroooaaam, wroooaam, wrooooaaaaaaaammmmm, screetch, and full stop !
After that week he had his summer vacation so he went to Ireland for a week. He left his car to his father who was supposed to fix it, some sort of mechanic he was. Well, my friend got back from Ireland but the car was gone. His father had taken it to the scrapyard
My mum has done it before for a few miles around town, you could really feel the car being sluggish. At the time she was doing it the speedo was broken, and to get the car to go at the speed she thought was right, needed some boot. Then she noticed the handbrake was up, so she could back off the power and drive in the "comfort spot" on the throttle. Turns out that spot was 90mph ¬_¬
She is so lucky she's never been caught speeding, because when she does, she really does. So far her fastest "opps too fast" speed has been 160mph, which is automatic disqualification. It's funny though because she always shows up the boy racers/ricers at the same time.
Well my friend drives his work vehicle often and at the moment the handbrake wire is overstretched (found that out going down a hill), so when he pulled up the handbrake the car didnt stop as it should and we rolled an extra 10 feet behind this car, hehe quite funny coming to a sudden stop as he jolted the handbrake up. (The car he drives is a 1998 Land Rover Discovery with 68,000 miles on it. Transmission is slightly buggered in 3rd gear, the 4-trak system is broken and only allows 4wd to be engaged and now it seems the handbrake needs sorting. His boss (who also owns the vehicle) says that he is gonna keep the vehicle as it isnt sale worthy and is just gonna run it down to the ground. But man can my friend drive treats the poor thing like its a normal road car even though the suspension is soft because it setup for offroading.... 90mph heading to Braintree on the A120 quite funny, the car weaved all over the place.
illepall 
. Well, he didn't drive that much so he didn't fix it. He drove about a week with (Mitsubishi Colt btw.) those brakes, mostly going to work and back. I remember sitting on the passengers seat few times (didn't have car back then) and I always tried to persuade him to fix the brakes. "Beatiful wheather isn't it", he replied or something similar, a joke, of course. He didn't really drive too fast and there was not much traffic on the mornings anyway... There was this one longish corner on the way o work where you need to brake and turn into the corner at the same time (a junction at the end of the long corner) and it was pretty fun see him shifting down almost to redline and finally stopping the car with the handbrake with slight oversteer. Wroooaaam, wroooaam, wrooooaaaaaaaammmmm, screetch, and full stop 
160!?!?!? What car does she drive?!?!?!