We have several trucks and leave the exhaust brakes on all the time unless we're on ice.....
We have learned to touch the throttle to turn off the exhaust brake in town or when slowing and we don't wish it to come on... .
What we have learned to do is do normal slow downs, with the exhaust brake to allow us to make the service brakes last longer... on our 04 3500 that pulls all the time, we got over 160K miles on the stock brake pads using the exhaust brake all the time... and we've learned what gear the transmission needs to be in going down a 5 - 7 % grade to get the exhaust brake to hold the load.....
Hope this has been of some help.....