Similarly do the special forces train on motorcycles? I doubt that the movies is a good indicator of real life, but I’m constantly seeing guys jacking motorbikes in action movies too. I assume that this could conceivably be something that a special ops guy or secret agent would need to know.
I would guess that most guys in the special forces are country boys who grew up riding dirt bikes, but if someone doesn’t know how to handle a bike, do they teach you?
Not necessarily. Among the big trucks we have at work, there are 10-speed transmissions and 18-speed transmissions. Their shift patterns are completely different.
All Delta Force members know how to drive almost anything they encounter, according to Delta Force: The Army’s Elite Counterterrorist Unit by Charlie Beckworth.
All Delta Force members know how to drive almost anything they might encounter, according to Delta Force: The Army’s Elite Counterterrorist Unit by Charlie Beckworth.
Well, you know those movies where the secret agent doesn’t jack a motorcycle? Those must be the guys who never learned.
Seriously, I’m amazed that it breaks someone’s willing suspension of disbelief when they see a movie with an American who knows how to drive a stick. Seriously?
The very vast majority of US ARMY vehicles are all automatic. The large FMTV/LMTVs don’t have a shifter of any kind–not even an auto one. All it has is push buttons to go from R, N, D. . . BUTTONS!!
The Stryker, the Bradley, the Hummer… all automatic. LHS? Automatic. Huge ass HEMMT? Automatic.
As for SF. There is no vehicle training in the SF course. After a person is already SF, he may be sent (if he is extremely lucky, it’s not a super common thing) to a school to learn to drive vehicles all Hollywood style with J Turns and all that. Enterestingly enough, this would be a civilian school. The same one that high class body guards and VIP Protection type people go to.
I believe that Army MPs and CID get way more cool-guy type driving training than SF.
IIRC, the now defunct DeSoto had button shifting in the mid to late 1950s, as did the much maligned Ford Edsel. Nothing new about button shifting.
The buses here have buttons to shift as well.
My grandmother had a Gogelmobile (sp?) that supposedly had some weird 3 position switch to shift gears with.
Which doesn’t help if you are forced to suddenly requisition a vehicle!
Normally, I’d agree. I can get into pretty much any manual vehicle and drive away smoothly without kangaroo hopping or stalling. But there is one exception - sometimes I have driven small utility trucks (borrowed or hired, so I didn’t know the clutch) that have had that awful American style handbrake that you pull out from the dash, usually because of a bench seat in front. I’m a big guy, and I can’t use this when my foot is on the clutch because my knee blocks it. This means I have to do hillstarts without the parking brake. This is no drama in my own car, but last time I found myself in a hired pickup on one of sydney’s steepest hills at the lights, with a BMW behind me, I was sweating it to say the least. I laid some rubber, as I recall.
American style? I’ve only seen those on small, japanese-made pickup trucks. Maybe they’re on some american trucks too, but the default American emergency brake on a truck seems to be the left foot pedal.
Aah, you’re probably right, given that I was actually in a small, Japanese-made pickup truck. For some reason, I’ve always associated them with big Detroit metal.
I was told by a good friend in the Army special forces HALO team that the people who belong to CIA paramilitary squads learn how to drive pretty much anything that moves, flys or floats. I would assume that he wasn’t lying since the things they do are more specialized than a lot of other military squads, but who knows.
The previous generation Mercedes E-Class has that too.
For that matter the ONLY vehicle still in use by the US Army with a stick shift, as far as I am aware, is the deuce and a half; and it is pretty much an obsolete vehicle that survives only on a select few installations.
I can’t talk for most Americans, but I can, anecdotally, tell you that every new firefighter I have trained in the past 7 years (more than 30), with the exception of one, could not drive a stick. That one new guy could drive anything with wheels, sails, or a screw, so he doesn’t count.
One of the laments of fire service instructors over the past 5-10 years is that the “new ducks” don’t have the same mechanical knowledge that those of us who came in 15+ years ago do. I haven’t had (with the exception of the one guy above) anyone who can open up a chainsaw and repair a stuck starter cord, or who can start a small gas engine with a finicky choke. Of course, the new ducks are stunning at joystick operated devices and can navigate a computer console with amazing ease, but they don’t get the true mechanical stuff.
Call it a change in the times, and an oversimplified generalization, but those kids today can’t drive sticks.
Wow, I’m officially a dinosaur now. That hurts.
You could always recruit foreign drivers… Virtually all of us who grew up outside the US learned to drive manual first.
*That said, I’ve only ever owned automatics and I’ve only driven one manual-transmission vehicle in the last 9 years.
Quick, somebody call The Colbert Report!
That’s just sad. Firefighters are suposed to be manly, and real men drive stick. I’ll never look at firemen the same way again.
FWIW, I know several SF guys and they can all drive a car with a manual, although such cars are difficult to find here in Japan. I’d say about 50-70% of the people I know in my age group (say, 25-35) can drive a manual.
I work in a large workplace, and I frankly don’t know if most of the workers can drive a manual or not, but I do know that for whatever reason, most of the very few manual cars in the staff carpark are owned by women.