Historically people who drive with one foot on each pedal go through brake pads faster as a function of overlap between the application of throttle and brake.

When I was taking Drivers Education (way back when) my teach asserted that from a neurological perspective it was faster for the brain to use one foot than two, because using two introduced an additional step in the process of deciding which part of the body to active. His claim (and I don't recall him providing direct evidence of this) that having go/stop be a choice of two movements of a single limb, allowed you to react faster than picking which of two limbs to activate for the desired behavior.

Historically people drove stick. And clutches were hard. Like seriously hard. I remember driving a tractor when I was 10 and I had to use my whole body weight to move the clutch.

So people's left foots were not sensitive enough for the break. Whereas the right foot was trained on the soft accelerator.

As a stick shift driver, it took me years to learn left-foot braking without stomping on the break and coming to an immediate full stop. But left-foot braking comes in very very handy on snow and gravel. It's also a lot of fun.

PS: modern clutches are soft, but you still usually either depress it fully or leave it alone, which means your left foot isn't too well trained in applying varied degrees of pressure

I would think that this would be true as you are learning, but once you have been performing the two-foot motion for several thousand miles I would think the action would be so ingrained in your muscle-memory as to remove entirely that cognitive decision. At some point you stop thinking about which foot and just automatically know brake=left foot.

As a lifelong manual card driver with a left-foot clutch, it takes about, oh, ten seconds of sitting in a go-kart with left foot brake and right foot accelerator to get used to it and adapt. There seems to be no real difficulty in switching which leg does what.

Depends what you're buying:

http://www.ford.com/cars/mustang/models/

I was explicitly taught not to do this, both in Driver's Ed and by my father. The explanation I was given was that it's bad for the car, since you'll tend to apply light brake pressure while accelerating which wears out the drive train and the brakes. Also it turns on your brake lights, potentially confusing other drivers.

Newer 3 pedal VWs apparently don't allow you to use the brake and the accelerator at the same time, which annoys people who heel and toe (left foot using clutch, heel of right foot pressing the brake and right toe blipping the gas to rev match on a downshift).

Edit: after doing some reading it seems this only happens when you aren't using the clutch, which means it makes left foot braking impossible.

A few of my relatives do this and it's always immediately obvious when you drive with them. The ride is substantially more jerky (although they claim there isn't a difference) and the break light is on half the time we're on the road.

Only half the time?

Yes, the author and proponent of this method of driving neglect this point entirely, and that it is clearly more dangerous (for the following drivers) to drive with "broken" brake lights.

But perhaps he believes that this habit could be broken as well?

It doesn't matter that there are more pedals than you have feet, since you never need to use more than two of them at a time. Your computer keyboard has more keys than you have fingers, but in general that doesn't cause problems.

There is at least one situation (heal-and-toe dance while downshifting and braking) where you are in fact using all three pedals - not exactly at the same time, but close enough that you want to use heel and toe for accelerator and brake, because you don't have time to move your leg back and forth.

I can't envision that scenario (I would just not downshift if it required the gas, which in my experience, it doesn't).

I do know of a 3-pedal scenario, though--on an uphill stop, maybe a traffic light, when another car gets close enough to you that you cannot afford to roll backwards. If you haven't planned for the situation (by using the clutch to maintain position rather than the brake), you'll need to continue braking while you start the car moving forward, to prevent rolling back.

Actually, using the clutch to maintain position is bad too. It heats the clutch up, which changes it's operation properties and very seriously reduces it's operating life.

I was taught to approach target position on hill, disengage gear train, use brake to hold car. Then, quickly switch from brake to clutch while applying gas... That's tough too.

So I always used the hand brake, leaving my two feet ready to use clutch and gas. In that case, it's optimal. Apply clutch and gas, until car begins to want to move, release hand brake and continue.

I won't own a manual car lacking a hand brake for this cuse case alone.

Now, with skill, it's entirely possible to do this with just the three pedals. One needs to release the brake, and while moving the foot to the clutch, engage gas and very rapidly find the engage point of the clutch and then continue to get the car into motion from there.

Roll back on this is perhaps an inch or maybe two done well.

I can do it, and was made to practice this, but I don't like doing it at all as it requires one to really execute a few things quickly with good precision.

I gas and brake with the same foot (it sounds like you clutch and brake with the left).

I can do the hill thing without rolling back in a car I'm familiar with, if the hill is not overly steep. Basically I hit the engage point while still depressing the brake. If the hill is too steep, you can stall doing this.

Anyway, I realize it's bad to use your clutch that way, but it seems better than rolling into a car, in most cases.

Total risk skill dynamic.

I can release the brake and engage clutch quickly enough in a car I have driven to avoid a significant roll. There is always the hand brake too.

I never replace clutches either. In most cases replacement is not too expensive, so whatever works right?

It may be that I just have never had to down-shift in traffic where I couldn't drop all the way to first and come back up. But usually I'm shifting up because I'm going too slow, or dropping a gear because of the jackass in front not going the speed limit.

Often people end up resting their feet on the brake pedal just enough to turn on the brake lights which makes them useless as indicators to the people behind you.

In a panic scenario, it's likely BOTH pedals will be engaged, and that's not likely to be the optimal response.

I was explicitly taught not to do this as well, and I've seen it go bad in action too. In many cars, slamming both pedals down hard results in the car continuing to move, when it's usually desirable for the car to quit moving more than it is for the car to speed up.

Yes, because I have the habit of applying clutch pressure with my left foot--it makes for a great panic stop.