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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

#191

Post by mcjiggerlog »

tyingq wrote: post #57
tough_cookies wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always had an easier time getting up snowy/ice hills (in Boston) than my friends did in their autos. I remember once driving up a hill in front of a friend so he could use my tire indentations to get up behind me.

Getting up was fine. Stopping at the precipice at a 4 way stop, then trying to start again was the tricky bit. With an auto you can hold the brake while you slowly press the accelerator, then release the brakes. Need a third foot to do that (or a hand brake) with a manual. Edit: Hill lock definitely sounds nice. Didn't exist when I was young, poor, and had crappy old American made manual shift cars...

As you said - that's what the hand brake is for.

Performing a hill start correctly is often part of driving tests in the UK.

Re: How America lost its love for the stick shift

#192

Post by morganvachon »

taeric wrote: post #182
morganvachon wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Your last sentence pretty much puts us in agreement. I will add an edit that says I am not trying to say never consider engine braking. Just realize that cars can get behind you quite quickly without you realizing it, and not signaling that you are stopping is dangerous. I have the same problem on my bike. I don't always signal when I'm about to stop at a corner, and have had folks near hit me for it. (Granted, if yo…

> Just realize that cars can get behind you quite quickly without you realizing it, and not signaling that you are stopping is dangerous.

One can always use hand signals too; that was something I was taught when I first learned to drive. Open hand out the window pointed up for a right turn, pointed straight for a left turn, and pointed down at the ground for slowing/stopping.

Of course that was 25 years ago; I wonder if hand signals are even still taught in driving schools.

Re: How America lost its love for the stick shift

#194

Post by taeric »

hug wrote: post #185
gnicholas wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Since engine braking is an extremely common way for motorcycles to reduce speed, there are any number of aftermarket products that are essentially an accelerometer inline with the brake light, which will turn on or flash the brake light when sudden deceleration is detected. I can see no reason why this wouldn’t work equally well for cars.

I was curious on this, so quickly checked a search. Some quora answers indicated it is a matter of regulation. General feel I got was it was expected to change with newer vehicles, but inertia in the current way things are certified will be a barrier.

Re: How America lost its love for the stick shift

#195

Post by rootusrootus »

setr wrote: post #149
dionidium wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Easy to say from the position of thinking you can't lose your license or have the financial means to deal with such a loss. There's a villainous cycle at work here. Car supremacy produces cities in which you need a car, so that attempts to push back on car supremacy can be credibly opposed on the grounds that they hurt the poor and less advantaged, when of course the very opposite thing is true.

the opposite is true in the long run . In the finalized scenario, where public transport is cheap, functional, useful and maintainable, or modern cities have been totally rewritten to support pedestrian first, it makes more sense than cars. But between removing cars today, and the day public transport actually reaches such a state, is long and far, and you fuck the car-less over for the entire duration. You can't sud…

To be fair, the OP didn't suggest taking away cars from poor people, just from people who can't be bothered to learn to drive responsibly.

Re: How America lost its love for the stick shift

#196

Post by bunderbunder »

pssflops wrote: post #169
t0mbstone wrote: post #163

Speaking as someone who has owned a number of sports cars with manual transmissions, I can tell you why I finally made the switch to automatic: Adaptive cruise control in stop and go traffic. I used to have to deal with a six-speed manual transmission in stop and go traffic for an hour every day, and it was pure torture. I mean, sure, it was fun for a weekend drive in the mountains, but it sucked the rest of the time…

My previous car, a 2008 Subaru WRX, in manual had cruise control; while it wasn't adaptive, it was the most important thing I will consider in any other manual transmission going forward. Stop-and-go traffic to my previous job made driving a chore and weekends weren't enough. I miss having that kind of control over the car, but the automatic Mazda3 I replaced it with has made that traffic an afterthought.

Would adaptive cruise control in stop-and-go traffic work at all with a manual? When the speed of traffic is vacillating between 0 and 30mph, there's never any one gear that you can stay in for long.

Re: How America lost its love for the stick shift

#197

Post by kenhwang »

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…

Federal regulation requires brake lights to be on if deceleration from regenerative braking to be over specified thresholds.

edit: apparently, it's UN regulation, not federal.

Re: How America lost its love for the stick shift

#198

Post by kirse »

ryandrake wrote: post #75

I’ve driven standard transmission for upwards of 15 years and see no need to change. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I’d be convinced that this trend was part of a country-wide conspiracy to take all the fun and excitement out of driving. It seems like every automotive engineering decision since the 80s has been dominated by occupant safety and comfort, and fuel efficiency, to the detriment of everything else. It’s…

has the same vanilla handling as a Camry

I hear ya. FWIW, a modern Camry would outpace a Ferrari or Porsche from the 80s, and arguably some of them are starting to give the early 90s (NSX, Supra, 300ZX, RX-7 etc) a run for the performance money. Looks not so much.

The fact that the majority of your vanilla commute-boxes (Camrys, Fusions, Accords, etc) are now shipping with 220+hp stock / 280+ sport and platforms that have gone through decades of rigidity research and tire tech, means the majority of drivers are getting way more performance potential than they can possibly wring out. A base 2018 Camry SE is now pulling 0.88g on the skidpad.

Heck your average soccer mom is now getting 300+hp in her "well-equipped" SUV for the red-light commuter drag race thanks to things like the 3.5 Ecoboost. Since when does a Ford Edge run a low-14 quarter-mile??

The last 10 years of automotive tech have been another golden age similar to the 60s IMO. Reliability, safety, and performance are all vastly superior.

Re: How America lost its love for the stick shift

#199

Post by luminiferous »

nzp wrote: post #64

OK, European here, maybe it's just the title wording, but the article left me somewhat confused. For as long as I can remember ('80s child) I was convinced that the US car market (and consumer preferences) were almost exclusively automatic. Even popular culture reinforced this (I don't remember ever seeing a manual transmission car in American movies and TV shows). Now this article suggests that even recently there w…

The American car market as a whole are almost entirely automatic due to overall consumer preferences. However, there is also a minority of enthusiast drivers who greatly prefer manuals and are very vocal as such. Cars that are marketed more towards the enthusiast end of the market are those that you'll find stick shifts in more often, e.g. Miatas, Porsches, Corvettes, etc. These days though, even the enthusiast cars are selling many more automatics than manuals.

Re: How America lost its love for the stick shift

#200

Post by taeric »

morganvachon wrote: post #192
taeric wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your last sentence pretty much puts us in agreement. I will add an edit that says I am not trying to say never consider engine braking. Just realize that cars can get behind you quite quickly without you realizing it, and not signaling that you are stopping is dangerous. I have the same problem on my bike. I don't always signal when I'm about to stop at a corner, and have had folks near hit me for it. (Granted, if yo…

> Just realize that cars can get behind you quite quickly without you realizing it, and not signaling that you are stopping is dangerous. One can always use hand signals too; that was something I was taught when I first learned to drive. Open hand out the window pointed up for a right turn, pointed straight for a left turn, and pointed down at the ground for slowing/stopping. Of course that was 25 years ago; I wonder…

I'm a biker, so hand signaling is most of what I do. Though, much easier said than done. And, most people in cars are highly focused on key features. The brake light in front of them being one of them.
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