the engine cannot brake to a complete stop, so break pads are always in use. At low RPMs, the engine is going to stall (manual) or switch to neutral (automatic).

Brake wear scales ~quadratically with vehicle speed. Applying them at 5mph vs 20mph is 16x less energy to burn off.

It can brake to nearly a complete stop though with the brakes basically holding the car in place at the end. I got pretty good at it.