回复：read my post carefully!!!

OK, I agree that for 1 & 2, both are usually unnecessary. But, and that was why I bothered to reply, there are always exceptional situations, and for #1, I think one should know that going N->D once in a while will not destroy the tranny; and for #2, it's important to know that brakes can fade.

If you drive enough miles and hours, all sorts of exceptional cases will happen. What if you have a kid in the passenger seat who accidentally knocks the shifter into N on a highway? What if you thought, for a split second, that the gas pedal is stuck so you shift into N, and then found out it's a plastic bottle that subsequently rolled out of the way? Do you have to cruise to a complete stop off the road? No, you can go back to D and keep driving. That's my point.

Have you never driven up a curvy and steep mountain road to high altitudes? On the way down, you need to constantly apply brakes to keep the car under 30mph, and there's a hairpin turn every 15 seconds that require you to slow down to 15mph? That the whole way down the mountain takes over half an hour? I have. And let me warn you, if you use your brakes all the time on the way down, within 15-20 minutes they'll heat up so much you won't get any braking left. That's why you keep the car in 2nd gear, so that you need to apply gas on a straight, and only brake at a hairpin. Again, not an everyday situation, but the point is if you just tell someone on this board "it's never going to happen" and he takes a vacation up say Pikes Peak, you'd be endangering his life.