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How America lost its love for the stick shift

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Re: How America lost its love for the stick shift

#171

Post by blattimwind »

usaar333 wrote: post #38
epx wrote: post #11

Automatic gears are much better for parking, etc. in particular when you have to park in a gradient. I've always longed for an automatic, bought the first when I could, and convinced the rest of the family to do the same with "test drives".

Ya, I have no idea how someone parallel parks a manual (w/out hill assist) on a 15% grade; I personally have to keep one foot on the break and one foot on the accelerator!

You just use the handbrake as necessary. I mean, it's not necessarily simple. But very much possible.

Re: How America lost its love for the stick shift

#172

Post by morganvachon »

taeric wrote: post #157
jedberg wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found that having a stick in traffic was actually easier for me. I could keep it in one gear which meant not moving my foot from brake to gas (I could just use engine breaking and use just the gas).

This is dangerous, as you aren't signaling people behind you if you are braking... Edit: I would likely soften the "dangerous" wording above. I'm not trying to claim this is guaranteed to get you killed. Just pointing out that bypassing a well established signaling mechanism of your vehicle should be a deliberate act. Not one of convenience.

Not really; it's pretty much impossible to stop suddenly via engine braking alone in a stick shift without forcing the transmission into a much lower gear (fourth to second or first, for example) and engaging the clutch, which will damage the drivetrain if done more than a few times. Engine braking, if done correctly, is a gradual slowdown with the ability to immediately accelerate again, all without wearing on your brakes, and once it's learned it becomes a natural part of driving a manual. If someone is following you close enough to hit you while you gradually slow down, tail lights or not, that's their fault for tailgating.

That said, engine braking isn't appropriate in all situations; I personally wouldn't do it in heavy stop-and-go traffic, but for highway and around-town driving it's perfectly safe. I definitely wouldn't do it with a tailgater behind me, just out of common sense.

Re: How America lost its love for the stick shift

#173

Post by singingboyo »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #122
babypuncher wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like your motor home just had a really crappy automatic transmission. I've spent a lot of time driving around the Rocky Mountains (since I live here) and have never really had this issue when towing trailers.

Probably somewhere between that and me not trusting it do it's own thing.

One thing that sticks out to me is that you say you were trying to get the gear you wanted - having driven various automatics, that's never really been what I'd care about. I just aim for a speed. Older automatics you end up noticing gearing sometimes, but just incidentally, and on CVTs, which is what I have now, you really don't care about 'gears' (which don't exist for CVTs anyway).

That said, I have driven automatics with some weird gearing where specific hills mean you'd oscillate around the desired speed. There, you do end up caring, unfortunately. That said, that's the kind of situation where the manual mode on newer stuff comes in, and on older stuff, you'd have a few gearing sets (Drive/Low/3, on a grand caravan I used to drive. Never did figure out what 3 was good for...)

Re: How America lost its love for the stick shift

#174

Post by notyourday »

commandlinefan wrote: post #152
Fezzik wrote: post #116

That bums me out, but I get it. My first non hand-me-down car was a beat-up Audi A4 (manual) off craigslist that I loved for years and years as a ski bum. I am definitely one of the many "manual transmissions are more fun" people. But once I got that office job, even 15 minutes a day in city traffic with a manual angered me, so I transitioned to an automatic. Now that I am out of the city I would love a manual again,…

I learned to drive in a manual. Now that my son is getting close to driving age, I wanted to teach him in a manual first, like I learned - and then I found out it's damned near impossible to _find_ one any more.

I find people who learned how to drive manual to be better drivers - they tend to think ahead which is understandable. One does not really want to shift just to jump ahead of one car to see that there's nowhere to go. It is too bad that fewer and fewer people have this skill.

Re: How America lost its love for the stick shift

#175

Post by taeric »

gnicholas wrote: post #168
taeric wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is dangerous, as you aren't signaling people behind you if you are braking... Edit: I would likely soften the "dangerous" wording above. I'm not trying to claim this is guaranteed to get you killed. Just pointing out that bypassing a well established signaling mechanism of your vehicle should be a deliberate act. Not one of convenience.

I've wondered how this is issue is addressed in EVs that offer one-pedal driving. Do they show the brake lights when deceleration exceeds a certain rate? Similarly, when I'm braking very lightly in my plugin-in hybrid in order to charge the battery all the way down a long hill, I wish there were a way to not have the brake lights activated the whole time. It's only barely slowing me down, and I've driven other cars t…

I'm curious why you care about the brake lights being on if you are actually braking. Even only slightly.

Though, to directly answer your question, I don't know how cars that only have a single pedal work with this. Embarrassingly, I didn't realize those existed, so would be as interested as you in the answer.

Re: How America lost its love for the stick shift

#176

Post by rootusrootus »

jedberg wrote: post #162
taeric wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is dangerous, as you aren't signaling people behind you if you are braking... Edit: I would likely soften the "dangerous" wording above. I'm not trying to claim this is guaranteed to get you killed. Just pointing out that bypassing a well established signaling mechanism of your vehicle should be a deliberate act. Not one of convenience.

Engine breaking just means slowing down by letting the foot off the gas. You aren't really slowing down that quickly. Someone has to really not be paying attention to miss it. It would be the equivalent of someone merging.

I agree, but you actually can slow down relatively quickly at stop-and-go speeds if you have some RPM on a big V8 and you take your foot off the gas. Certainly I try to remember that, because I tend to avoid using the brake pedal except when strictly necessary. I've seen some people behind me act kinda surprised that I can slow down without activating the lights. Yes they should be watching my car, not my lights, but this is the real world.

Re: How America lost its love for the stick shift

#177

Post by nostrademons »

taeric wrote: post #157
jedberg wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found that having a stick in traffic was actually easier for me. I could keep it in one gear which meant not moving my foot from brake to gas (I could just use engine breaking and use just the gas).

This is dangerous, as you aren't signaling people behind you if you are braking... Edit: I would likely soften the "dangerous" wording above. I'm not trying to claim this is guaranteed to get you killed. Just pointing out that bypassing a well established signaling mechanism of your vehicle should be a deliberate act. Not one of convenience.

Engine braking is a pretty gradual deceleration - if the car behind you doesn't notice that you're slowing down in the ~30 seconds it takes to close a safe distance with a car that's gradually slowing down, you got bigger problems. For that matter, automatics do it too. Take your foot off the gas in an automatic and wind/rolling resistance will eventually slow you down too.

I find that the fuel economy savings from engine breaking are largely a matter of incentives. You can drive the same way in an automatic, and you will get nearly the same fuel economy savings. You're just not incentivized to do so, since the break/gas dance is much easier in an automatic and you don't have the cognitive feedback of needing to shift gears each time you accelerate or decelerate.

Re: How America lost its love for the stick shift

#178

Post by CydeWeys »

taeric wrote: post #160
commandlinefan wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned to drive in a manual. Now that my son is getting close to driving age, I wanted to teach him in a manual first, like I learned - and then I found out it's damned near impossible to _find_ one any more.

I confess I gained a ton of respect for Klik & Klack was when they gave the advice to not teach kids on a stick shift. This is akin to teaching a kid to ride a 21 speed bike. They can probably get up to that rather quickly, all told, but just learning the basics of balance and pedaling will already be difficult enough. Similarly, just learning the basics of the car will already be tough. Why add to it? Why not take a…

Agreed. I learned on an automatic at 15 and then "upgraded" on my own to a manual in my 20s because I wanted one. Adding in a manual transmission makes driving non-trivially harder. Just learning the basics of not hitting things, merging, keeping an eye out for traffic, signaling, etc., is hard enough for beginners.

Re: How America lost its love for the stick shift

#179

Post by Zanni »

joeblau wrote: post #59

My brother has an R8, Viper, and Vantage (All Manual) and I would rather drive a Tesla over all 3 of them. Manual is fun and you get the feeling of control and I love driving them, but in reality, there is a reason they are on their way out. The main problem is that the replacement, automatic, make driving feel worse. The computers that manage automatic transmissions are so bad that they make automatics feel terrible…

Definitely this. I used to think I preferred manuals for the sense of control. When I got a Tesla, I realized what I was really looking for was responsiveness.

I also have an Audi TTS which is automatic but has a "manual" mode. Apparently it can shift faster than a human being, which makes it much quicker to leave it on auto if you're going for a fast 0-60 time. Just stomp on the gas and it'll shift at the optimum moment. But since that's rarely what I actually want to do, I find the auto-shifter too conservative for my taste most of the time and drive it in (no clutch) "manual." But the Tesla is just better: faster off the line, perfectly responsive, never in the wrong gear. I don't miss manual at all when I drive my Model S.

Re: How America lost its love for the stick shift

#180

Post by rootusrootus »

notyourday wrote: post #174
commandlinefan wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned to drive in a manual. Now that my son is getting close to driving age, I wanted to teach him in a manual first, like I learned - and then I found out it's damned near impossible to _find_ one any more.

I find people who learned how to drive manual to be better drivers - they tend to think ahead which is understandable. One does not really want to shift just to jump ahead of one car to see that there's nowhere to go. It is too bad that fewer and fewer people have this skill.

It definitely makes you look a little farther ahead to plan your moves so you don't have to constantly keep working the clutch to move forward another couple feet like folks with automatics do.
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