I think steam power kept being used for road rollers after it had fallen out of use for other vehicles. Steam-powered trucks were popular in Britain until the 1930s- for instance, this is a 1934 Sentinel:
What killed them was a change in the law to tax heavy trucks by weight, which made steam-powered vehicles prohibitively expensive to run compared to the lighter diesels. On the other hand, for a road roller where weight is an advantage, there was less of a reason to switch to diesel.
In the UK it’s explicitly part of the driving test to use the handbrake when you’re stopped. We’re taught to use it at pretty much any time the car isn’t moving, rather than just sitting with a foot on the brake pedal, but most people don’t bother with that. I think the name ‘handbrake’ as opposed to ‘emergency brake’ points to a cultural difference in it’s use.
My mum did have her car run away once, because she’s getting arthritis and combined with an overly stiff handbrake, didn’t quite engage it properly.
She came back half an hour later to find that her car wasn’t where she’d parked it, because it had rolled right through a car park, missed every other vehicle, and been stopped by some construction sized bags of sand. My dad managed to repair the small amount of damage with a hammer.
steamroller,
talkin bout my hamroids baby.
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