The park brake can be made to work correctly but it does take a bit of fiddling. I replaced my PB shoes recently and it was a lot of tweaking to get them working well.

As you say, there is a process for adjusting them. Slacken off the cable at the park brake lever (remove the leather boot for better access), then wind up rear wheel adjusters until they touch the rotors hard enough to not be able to rotate the rotors by hand. Then back them off 10 clicks, then return up front and adjust cables at park brake lever until it only pulls up two or three clicks.

I didn't get it right first time - more like the third or fourth.

Here in New Zealand all vehicles undergo a comprehensive safety check (annually on vehicles over 5 years old) that includes a test of the park brake effectiveness. This is usually done on a "rolling road" type brake tester and I watched my X5 being tested. My park brakes gave a very high braking force readings and they matched very well (left to right).

They still don't seem to hold the car as well as I would expect but they do hold it OK on steep streets etc.

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Wayne
2005 BMW X5 3.0d (b 02/05)
2001 BMW F650GS Dakar (b 06/01)