Just out of curiosity, approximately when did this change take place?
Can’t speak for anyone else, but IME, that was true for the first few months I was driving a standard. Then I got the hang of it, and it 's been no big deal ever since.
How long would it take before the injection returns? My bet is less time than it takes to spin out.
My present car is a front-wheel-drive automatic with fuel injection, and I’ve had to slap it into neutral to prevent a spin. Return of control was immediate once the power to the wheels was disengaged, but it wasn’t when I only released the accelerator.
Mid 80s or thereabouts.
That probably speaks to the skills of the driver again - I’ve been driving my manual Corolla for seven years now (and boy, is my leg tired! Ba-dump-bump), and I can hold it on any hill without the brakes without moving a centimeter.
I think the non-manual drivers just have to take our word for it that while it might look more complicated, it really isn’t once you’re used to it. You get used to it fast, too - every trip you take has you shifting a hundred times - you get used to the first/second/third gear shift up and down like you get used to walking up or down stairs.
Yes, obviously. the point isn’t whether manual is hard or easy to learn, or whether or not it becomes a instinctive skill eventually – its whether it is inherently safer. it can’t be inherently safer, since inexperienced manual transmission drivers are not safer. They are much MORE distracted than inexperienced automatic drivers, and can cause serious accidents through extremely common errors (such as by sliding backwards into another car or stalling out). Thus, the question of “safer” is dependent on the driver, not the transmission.
One cause of many accidents is that the driver is not paying attention far enough ahead, and notices a problem too late to avoid it, or tailgates, or exits across 3 lanes because they didn’t notice their exit approaching. Driving a standard well requires the driver to anticipate the needed gear, and so encourages the driver to look farther ahead and anticipate slowing traffic etc.
It also encourages you to average the speed rather than accelerating and braking with the car in front of you, in order to avoid shifting, and that reduces the chances of a rear-end collision. You CAN do this with an automatic of course, but there is not the same incentive that a manual gives.
Finally, driving a manual forces you to pay a lot more attention to how the car is operating, and may lead to addressing mechanical issues sooner. Much of this is related to the types of vehicles that are associated with manual transmissions rather than the gearbox. I have been in some high-end luxury cars that you couldn’t tell if the engine was running from inside the passenger compartment. It amazes me that this is considered a good thing by some.
Most of my manual driving is secondary/muscle memory. In casual driving, I don’t really need to anticipate further ahead, any more than I do when driving automatic. I’m trying to stay within a given point in my engines powerband, where going above or below isn’t critical-- not so much shifting to accommodate traffic. If I need to threshold brake, for example, that becomes the job of my brakes, and more importantly, my tires.
When I’m driving for performance reasons, sure, I’ll need to anticipate a curve, brake, or acceleration point (as I would in any car), but only a portion of that can be ascribed to the gearbox.
In my opinion, I think it’s a bit of a stretch to attribute this to a manual gearbox, too. Again, I think it just highlights the established relationship between a car enthusiast who is conscious of his/her car. Just the same, I’ve seen a number of people burn a clutch and obliterate/abuse their gearbox. Negligent/casual people will be just that-- it still gets back to the driver, IMO.
As most people said, 99.9999% of times (Hell, might need another couple decimal places there) it’s the driver, not the car.
However, in this completely contrived, Devil’s advocate scenario, a manual is safer:
Imagine a runaway car (like that made up Toyota problem a few years ago.) The brakes aren’t working, accelerator is stuck, and it won’t shift out of gear…well, on a manual, there’s always the clutch. It can act as one more “fail safe” in that EXTREMELY unlikely event.
And, of course, on a manual, it’s also not really possible to not shift out of gear in the first place, since it’s a direct linkage to the gearbox, not just a little lever that sends an electronic signal to a servo to disconnect the drivetrain or put it in park. (I also realize the vast majority of automatics are also direct linkages, and only a small percentage are using a more electronic form of shift, like the Prius…but the trend seems to be drifting that way, so expect to see more of them.)
bouv, I’m a manual fan but I have to say that it is in fact pretty easy on most manual transmissions to shift out of gear without using the clutch - just push hard on the gearstick and it’ll go into neutral.
Getting it into gear without a clutch is a different matter (but also feasible with practice - when my clutch hydraulics failed a few months ago the guy from the garage managed to go from neutral to first to second and drove it onto the truck that way).
I drive a manual and think they are safer in snow; you have exact control of what gear you are in and how much torque to apply to the drive wheels/road. You also tend to be more in tune with the power delivery of your vehicle.
Otherwise all I can think of are rare scenarios. A manual transmission could also be safer in accident avoidance, downshift say from 5th to 3rd and gun it to get out of the way. That’s as much a function of your acceleration as the transmission though. A manual transmission also allows you to coast down mountains without riding your brakes.
Wish’t I had toys like that to play with!
When doomsday unfolds, my only hopes are (a) that I survive long enough to see it well underway, and (b) that my own demise is reasonably painless.
As for manual transmissions going the way of the horse and buggy – With all the current R&D going into self-driving googlemobiles, even with automatic transmissions, the driver-operated car will soon be going the way of the rotary telephone. In another couple generations, young drivers won’t know how to drive any kind of vehicle (except for those kids who go into a profession that calls for it). Driver-operated cars with auto trans will be a curiosity, but driver-operated cars with manual trans (if your grandkids have ever even heard of such) will be seen only in history museums, right alongside ye aulde hand-crank-powered gramophones. History-challenged kids will be unsure if Ben Franklin invented them, or if Ben Hur drove one.
Minor anecdote. Drove my manual a few miles tonight after drinking one small beer (well under legal limit), which I almost never do. Was surprised how much my co-ordination was affected, had 3 clumsy gear changes where I didn’t release the clutch smoothly or fumbled a bit with the gear lever, probably doubling my tally for the year. I’m also a bit tired having had a poor night’s sleep yesterday, not sure how much of it was down to that. Either way, manual plus fatigue or impairment is not a great combination, although it did at least alert me to the fact I wasn’t 100%.
Yes, and in the 1950’s I could have sworn that by now I’d be flying to work in my atomic powered flying car. 
I’ve been driving my wife’s 2009 Accord for the past couple of days. (Excellent timing for this thread!) Unlike the 2000 Accord I usually drive, the 2009 is an automatic.
I’ve been noticing that when it’s in drive, all I have to do to start up from a full stop is to take my foot off the brake, and the car will start propelling itself forward even before I can reach the gas pedal. And when I take my foot off the gas, the drop-off in speed is discernably less than when I do the same thing with my own car. So, for instance, if I take my foot off the gas to slow down for a curve, I’ll have more speed going into the curve when driving the automatic than when driving the standard.
You may be correct that all contemporary fuel injected cars stop injecting fuel when when the throttle is closed, but if that’s the case, it evidently it takes more than simply removing one’s foot from the gas pedal to close the throttle.
And as a driver, I really don’t care about what’s causing the car to deliver power to the wheels when my foot’s not on the gas pedal; all I care about is *that *it is doing it. Safety-wise, I regard it as a bug, not a feature.
My vote is the automatic is way less safe because it encourages drivers to try to do other activities, and here I mean talk on the phone. Talking on the phone is just too much trouble in a manual, for me anyway.
Just bought my first ever automatic after almost 40 years of driving a stick. When I drove a stick I was actually DRIVING the car. I had to pay attention to what was going on and all of my hands and feet were occupied. In only a month of driving an automatic I’m already talking on the phone and screwing with the radio more. I imagine that within a year I will convince myself it’s OK to yak on the phone and smoke a cigarette and eat a sandwich while I drive, all at the same time, because I have that one hand free.
What’s probably happening here is that the high gear on your wife’s car is steeper than the high gear in your car and so you’re used to getting more engine braking when you’re off the throttle. It’s not that the engine is still producing power once you take your foot off the gas, it’s just not slowing the car down as fast. If you popped your manual into neutral as soon as you let off the gas, you would probably arrive at the curve going as fast if not faster than the automatic.
This isn’t an inherent property of manual transmissions, but these days automatics tend to get geared steeper because the car makers think manual customers want quicker acceleration, which comes at the expense of fuel economy. Plus with the incredible rate of model bloat occurring with the Accord, your wife’s car is much bigger and much more powerful than yours, and higher gearing is a major part of why it still gets about the same mileage as its more modest predecessors.
The problem with this theory is that, like many if not most stickshift drivers, I hit the clutch at the same time as I brake, so the slowdown I get with the standard is a coasting slowdown. With the automatic, I’m going into the turn faster than I would if I were coasting, and the ‘feel’ is that the car’s still trying to accelerate.
What you say about the Accord model bloat is absolutely true, and the bigness (and corresponding lack of fuel economy) bugs us. If we had it to do all over again, we’d have gotten a Civic this last time.