[signaway24]

Last night, I pulled into my driveway, which as a slight downhill grade, put the truck in park. I awoke to my two dogs breaking non-stop. I jumped up to see what was going on. To my suprise my truck had somehow moved about 8 feet down the driveway and missed hitting the house by less than a foot. Does anyone have any ideas or reasoning for the truck to roll this far while being parked??
Shane

 

[dragondon]

That does sound scary.

I have always used the parking brake in my Neon. Relying on just the park position in a tranny is obviously not a good idea. Plus, I vaguely recall someone once telling me that the pin that actually holds the tranny in park really isn't that strong and a simple bump by another car can shear it. Hopefully someone here can elabourate on this.

I seriously hope you took a strip off your local dealership!

 

[McGuireV10]

That's absolutely correct. The Park position in an automatic transmission involves a pin that is about half the diameter of your small finger. Definitely always use the parking brake. The only place I don't bother is in my garage. There are some photos of a typical Park-position mechanism here:

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/automatic-transmission5.htm