The parking brake can be used when parking on a hill to relieve the transmission lock of undue pressure. That makes it so much easier to move the lever from “park” to a motion setting.
Certainly. A ‘well-designed’ parking pawl could also be designed to seem to be “frictionless”. My point is that NHTSA is generally unwilling to even discuss things that reduce automaker’s cost, even if performance can also be improved in the process.