I am a new driver and I have a manual car and even thou I drive a lot, I am scared as f… from hills, mild ones, not really steep ones, just today I made a small column of cars behind me because first my car turned off and after I was mostly reving it because the clutch was giving me a hard time, in normal driving without hills I don’t have any problems, but here…jesus. Although when I came home and parked my car, there was someone coming out of the street where I just came from, where there is a hill (not the one I described earlier) and that person also had a hard time, while I passed that hill easily.
My question is, is it easier to drive an automatic when starting on a hill? Because you don’t have the clutch and thus the car can’t stall (?) and turn off or I think that it can’t even roll backwards (which happened to me and that person I saw later, if you didn’t experience that…trust me, you don’t want to) I never drove an automatic yet,so I really wonder…
Yes, automatics are easier to drive on hills.
But, you can learn to drive a manual on hills, too. Do you know how to use the parking brake?
yes they are.
got where there is no traffic and practice starting and stopping on a slight incline. do it until no rollback. then go to a bigger incline.
yeah, it takes practice. the thing to make sure you avoid is don’t race the engine while you’re letting off the clutch pedal. what I’ve done is when I’m ready to get moving on a hill, I just start letting the clutch engage while my foot is still on the brake, then when ready to go feed it gas like a normal take-off.
Actually it can if the hill is steep enough, or sometimes it might stay in place on just the right slope (with foot off the brake). Either of these conditions can cause extra wear inside the transmission, so avoid them – either accelerate or apply the brake.
Making life a bit easier are “Hill Assist” functions. Depending on the grade of the hill and/or the pressure applied to the brake pedal, the brakes on my Challenger remain locked for about 1.5 seconds.when I remove my foot from the brake pedal. Initially I disabled the this function thinking it was a bit wussy. Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t, but I’ve since re-activated it. My preference would be to have an emergency brake lever available to pull up with my right hand.
Yeah, there’s no trick to automatics. With manuals, it sounds like you should learn how to use the parking brake for hill starts if you haven’t. If you do, the it’s just a matter of practice. I learned the hard way by stalling out countless times in the Alps, but eventually it becomes second nature, like driving manual itself,
When I learned to drive my dad took me to a hill, marked the location of the rear bumper, then told me to start out as best I could. I rolled back what felt like about 10 feet before I got it going, and he marked the furthest point I’d rolled. I got out and looked at actual distance, which was about 8 inches. I’ve since repeated this exercise for every driver I’ve taught.
The sensation of the car rolling backwards is weird and unsettling, but you have to learn to accept it as normal. The distance between you and the car behind you, even if they pull up “real close,” is probably about 6 feet, and there’s no way you’re going to roll that far. So just relax and focus on going forward, and eventually you’ll get to where you don’t really roll backward at all.
Or you can try the parking brake trick, but that should really only be necessary in extreme situations.
As others have said, practice, practice, practice. It will become second nature. Go out on Sunday mornings or late at night if necessary when traffic is light. It really won’t take that long to learn.
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While the differences between manual and automatic transmissions are factual enough (and have been dealt with factually upthread), advice and opinion on how to deal with those differences is better suited to our advice and opinion forum.
Moving thread from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion.
Over here in the UK where almost every able bodied driver learns in a manual, hill starts are one of the trickier things to learn.
As said above, it is a matter of holding the car with the handbrake, while increasing the revs and letting the clutch out. Doing all this while keeping an eye on traffic is pretty daunting, but like most things in driving, practice makes it so easy you don’t even have to think about it.
bob++, you may find it interesting that not all vehicles in the U.S. have hand brakes. Many parking brakes work through a pedal to the left of the clutch, such as in my 2009 Ford Ranger. Thus, it is pretty useless for hill holding. This kind of parking brake along with a clutch is most often found in pickup trucks, which are as common here as manual transmissions are in the U.K.
If an auto-transmission vehicle is hovering on a hill without the brake being applied, then it doesn’t know or care whether the brake is being applied; it will not wear any faster or slower if you put your foot on the brake.
If it’s rolling backward down the hill without the brake being applied, it’s because the torque converter is allowing slightly more speed mismatch (between engine and transmission) than it would if the car is standing still. The torque converter is designed to allow speed mismatch; the transmission fluid absorbs the energy as heat, so you can overheat your transmission if it’s in slip mode for a long time under substantial load (e.g. ascending long mountain passes while towing a trailer), but the tiny bit of roll-back one might experience between releasing the brake and applying the accelerator adds insignificant heat.
To the OP: yes, automatics make hill starts painless, but with practice you’ll get good enough at driving a manual that hills should stop being a cause for concern.
Using the handbrake to keep from backsliding while you engage the clutch should ease your mind until you develop your clutch skills. I do this all the time on my motorcycle because I can wrap a few fingers around the front brake lever while still being able to operate the throttle grip.
Thanks everyone, I will most likely buy an automic later (my current car is 15,16 years old, which is the main reason) , so I just wanted to be sure. And yes, as someone said, the main problem here, in a manual, is that you have to pay attention to the clutch (clutch itself without anything else can be a hassle sometimes on my car), to the gas, the handbrake and traffic, specially if you are in a street with loads of cars (btw. I am not sure what the parking brake is (I am not from a english speaking country), I only have the handbrake and the normal brake, the thing between gas and clutch,so I suppose that the parking brake is that)
no, that’s the “service” brake, the things that normally stop the car. The handbrake doubles function as a parking brake.
Yep, the parking brake is the same as the hand brake. And as mentioned above, on some vehicles the parking brake is a pedal on the far left (left hand drive) under the dash. You may also hear people refer to the parking brake as the emergency or e-brake. My advice would be to remove the parking brake from the process entirely. Practice enough so that you can take off on a hill without it. You’re just throwing an extra thing to worry about into the mix.
The handbrake, parking brake, and emergency brake are all the same thing. Just depends on who you’re talking to or which part of the English-speaking world you’re in.
Adding to what the others said, just keep practicing. It’ll become second nature soon enough. I’d suggest using the handbrake trick only when absolutely positively necessary. Once you really get the hang of moving your foot from the brake to gas while letting in the clutch you should be able to get the car moving on pretty much any hill without rolling back. It just takes practice.
It’s interesting that US manufacturers mostly have gone to the foot operated parking brake. It makes it almost useless for hill starts because only Rolf Harris had three legs and he’s in prison now and doesn’t need a car. Apart from the couple of times I drove a car in the US, all the cars and small trucks I’ve driven have had a hand operated park brake. Either under the dash or floor/console mounted and capable of being operated in conjunction with accelerator and clutch to allow smooth, roll-backless hill starts. I think it’s even part of the driver licence tests in New Zealand to be able to do a hill start.
Even a motorcycle can do smooth starts with right (left) foot on the rear brake, and hand control of the throttle and clutch.
Let the brake off as the clutch starts to take up, and away you go.
Not necessarily a needed skill if your car has an automatic tranny, because they are dead easy to start on a hill by comparison with a manual one.
The foot operated parking brake isn’t all that common in the U.S. in combination with manual transmissions, since only about 10% of the cars and light trucks sold here have manual transmissions. The larger cars have the foot brake, and you can’t even get manuals in any of them any more. The combination of foot parking brake and clutch is probably most common in pickup trucks.