[QUOTE=groman]
I am confused by the implication that driving stick is some sort of a voodoo art that requires separate testing and certification or you are bound to kill someone. Do you also have a cupholder validation sticker on your license when you pass your cupholder exams? :dubious:
Shifting gears might be a bit tricky, but I don’t think it’s so much different from driving automatic to require a license category. It’s not like it’s motorcycles or airplanes that require a fundamentally different approach as well as different way of looking at the transportation task in front of you. A bus, a tractor, a car, a truck - if it keeps it’s own balance, has a steering wheel and can go forward you can drive it after a cursory scan of the owners manual or watching somebody do it for ten minutes. To (possibly mis-) quote Dave Barry “It’s not a spaceship, asshole. Drive.”
Strangely I’ve encountered this attitude in the US as well. Last time I was moving I took my chances and did not reserve a U-Haul, but simply showed up on the day of the move and rented whatever they had available. Err, I didn’t expect the only thing available to be a 24’ diesel stick-shift mover, but I wasn’t going to turn it down. At that point I’ve driven stick once before in a parking lot and it was a 4-cyl saturn. I took the keys, got in and drove it home where my friends were eagerly waiting to help me load it. For some reason I got a few “…and they just let you rent it?” and one “Do you even know how to drive stick?” … “Well I do now.”
Now, which component of driving stick is considered to be dangerous or all that different? So you have a new pedal that gives you some control over how engine power is applied and you have to shift the car into the right gear. Yes, if you throw it into the wrong gear or do something stupid with the clutch you could potential cause some sudden movement/noises, but if you throw an automatic into P on the freeway it ain’t going to be pretty either. It’s not that much different from a mountain bike vs. road bike.
Strange people.
P.S. The only place I’ve actually seen the cliche jerk-stall-jerk-stall failure is TV. I’ve never seen anybody have trouble with stick, I’ve never had to avoid somebody because they were stalling every twenty feet and I’ve never heard anybody grind gears on the street. Are you sure inability to drive stick isn’t made up?
[/QUOTE]
I think the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Driving a manual is not particularly what I’d call a voodoo art. It’s a skill, but a simple one (for the purposes of the average suburban driver). Controlling the clutch and gear lever might not be particularly harder than controlling the wheel, brake, and accelerator. HOWEVER, think back to your first ever driving lesson, and how clunky you were with those latter controls. A confident, intelligent driver with auto-only experience will frustratingly find themselves at that initial parking lot newbie stage when driving manual for the first time. Sure, they can pick it up quickly, but you don’t want that time to be an inconvenient one. I would classify driving an unfamiliar rental car in an unfamiliar city as an inconvenient time. Or having to get a sick or injured person to hospital in their car. Or numerous other scenarios.
One difference between the gear controls and the other controls is that for some non-mechanically minded people, their function isn’t clear. Certainly not as clear as “This is the go thing, this is the stop thing, and this is the left and right thing”. If you don’t understand torque bands, the trade-off of power versus speed, etc, you might be a little behind the eight ball when learning.
Many manual drivers do overstate the skill involved, it is true. But I agree with the licencing system that makes a distinction. I know that, for my own jurisdiction, there was for a time a sensible compromise - and that was that new drivers who had passed the test in an automatic couldn’t drive a manual for a period of several years. That seemed reasonable. I don’t know if it’s still the case.
