My dad taught me to use the handbrake in his VW, in an area where the only steep hills are on access roads over the Mississippi River levee.
I wouldn’t know about driving schools. I learned from my dad.
He didn’t teach me the parking brake trick. He just taught me to go from the brake to the gas as fast as possible. This inevitably causes some rollback, but with skill it’s never more than a couple of inches.
It’s unusual to be driving a manual transmission in driving school in the US (IME). You can get a full license on only an automatic, so none of the schools I’m familar with even have manual transmissions in the “fleets.” I learned how to drive a stick from my father, after I’d had a driver’s license for about two years.
There are many in the US who regard using the handbrake on a hill start as “cheating” of some sort, it seems. I’m familiar with the practice and have no problem with it, but the stickshift pickup truck I recently got rid of had a foot-operated parking brake that was (nearly) useless as hill-start-assister. I did 'em the old-fashioned way, learning how to quickly jump from brake to gas with minimal* rollback, much like tdn describes.
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- Zero would be an extraordinary claim to make, but it was generally negligibly small.
Really? I learned to drive on a stick, and took my driver’s test on that same car, passed the first time, and got my license.
Did you mean something else?
I don’t know of any difference in licensing between automatics and manual transmissions, either, only that most people learn to drive and test on an automatic. If you took driving lessons with a manual transmission car and passed the test on that kind of car, you’d still have a Class 5 license.
I took that to mean “You get a full, unrestricted-by-transmission driver’s license if you drive/test on an automatic; no manual transmission testing required,” and not, “You can only get a driver’s license on an automatic,” which is how I assume your brain interpreted it.
OK, that makes more sense.
It’s funny, I said that I passed the first time, but that’s not entirely true. The first time I went my father urged me to use mom’s car, an automatic the size of a boat. I was very uncomfortable driving it, so I objected. Dad finally convinced me though. When we showed up for the test, the DMV guy pointed out that the inspection sticker had expired, so I was unable to take the test. A week later we showed up again, this time in dad’s Corolla. That’s when I passed.
You guys have licenses that are restricted by transmission type? That sort of makes sense, but we don’t have that here.
It’s one thing for pedestrians to have a right of way over vehicles; it’s another thing to take it as an infinite license to ignore vehicle movement. In particular, the parking lot of the supermarket I most frequently shop at is like a demolition-derby rodeo, and the near-suicidal behavior of the pedestrians there doesn’t help.
Agreed - cars and pedes have to co-exist in parking lots, but that doesn’t mean pedes have the right to march right up the middle of the driving lane, or saunter along on the diagonal instead of making a quick cut across a driving lane.
There was a time when testing in an automatic meant being restricted from sticks but I don’t think any state has done that since the '70s, possibly longer.
I have a very long, slightly slanted driveway. We have no sidewalks on our street, but we do have a parkway, with lots of hedges (our neighborhood likes hedges). I tend to back out slowly, given the hedges and the fact that I have 3 kids (there are not a lot of kids on the street).
So, can someone tell me why a mother would allow her approximately 7-8 year old daughter to ride her bike ON the parkway, in close proximity to the hedges, instead of on the road with her?
I almost ran the girl over. She rammed her bike’s front wheel into my front passenger door. I had seen the mom riding her bike about 200 feet away from my driveway and had planned to back to the end of the driveway, allow her to ride by and then turn and proceed to drive etc. I had no idea there was a kid riding just in front of the hedge.
The mom had the gall to yell at me for “barreling” out of my own driveway(!). :rolleyes: Luckily, the girl was not hurt, although she was upset. I about had a heart attack.
I can’t discuss bikes and cycling. My blood pressure can’t take it.
If they were in the street, Mom would probably be giving hand singals for the kid. Yes, I have seen this; I was a passenger in the car that the kid ran into.
Yeah, that’s what I meant. Apologies for the confusing wording…
I’m guessing this is a regional usage I’m not familiar with, but could you explain what you mean by parkway in this context?
A parkway around here is a stretch of (usually) grass between either the sidewalk* (which we don’t have on our street-- although sidewalks are quite common in our town) or hedge/flower bed/tree line that is placed where the sidewalk should be in front of a row of suburban houses.
Lute–but they weren’t in the street. Only mom was in riding in the street (the only safe place to ride on my street). Daughter was riding on the grass in front of the hedges, hidden from my view–even in a minivan. I couldn’t see her, not even the top of her head. :eek: :rolleyes:
*pavement to you Brits.
Thanks. I guess we have those here, too, but I’ve never heard them called that. There’s a strip of grass about 4 feet wide between the sidewalk and the street in front of our house.
Actually, I’m not sure what I’d call it out here in a conversation. “The strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street,” probably, if I wanted to be understood. 
We don’t in the US, but I’m pretty sure that some other countries do.
According to an article I tried to post twice this morning, 88% of American and Canadian light duty vehicles are automatics, so manual transmissions aren’t popular enough to make different licenses for.
And Soylent Juicy, I hope this taught you something valuable. When in reverse if your foot is not on the brake, you need to be looking out the rear window, not trying to rely on the mirrors. There are far too many stories about people backing over toddlers and passersby for this not to be something we all need to care about.