I had the same experience – only in reverse, going from Australia to the United States. (To my surprise, we were given a manual hire car, rather than an auto.) I kept whacking my driver’s door with my right-hand, not to mention turning on the windscreen wipers instead of the indicators!
Maybe 99% of the people I know here in Australia can drive a manual car. Come to think of it, I only know one woman and one man who CAN’T. (They both keep that pretty quiet, since otherwise we’d mock them mercilessly. ;))
Myself, I’ve never owned a car with an automatic transmission. I hate driving them since I feel like I have less control over the car’s speed – there’s nearly always something of a lag when you hit the throttle, plus you’re forced to constantly use the brakes rather than shifting down gears to slow the car.
I never thought to ask any of my friends if they can. I’ve only seen automatics in their cars, though.
All the men in my family can drive a stick, and my mother can.
The other women in my family probably can, for the most part. We’re talking about people who learned to drive when the automatic was still a “new-fangled gadget”.
My sister cannot, and she apparently refuses to learn. Her boyfriend currently drives a stick-shift truck.
My first car was a stick-shift… had it for nine years.
As far as I’ve been able to observe, we all shift quite smoothly.
Given I know people of all ages (late teens through 70s, anyway) I’d say maybe half of the people I know can drive a manual transmission - and the vast majority of that half are made up of the middle-aged to elderly people I know.
Very few people who are my age (26) and younger seem to know how. I certainly don’t. I’ve attempted it, but it’s just too much of a hastle to make a serious effort at it; I suppose I could do it in an emergency since I know the basics, but I hope it’s never required of me since I was * never* successful at getting into third gear…
So no one told you life was gonna be this way
Your job’s a joke, you’re broke, your love life’s D.O.A
It’s like you’re always stuck in second gear
When it hasn’t been your day, your week, your month, or even your year
But…
A month ago I got a great deal on a 2000 VW beetle, one of the reasons the old lady got rid of it (Yes, it was that mythical old lady the dealers like to talk about) was because of the stick. I had some fears that after 12 years of not driving a sick shift, that I was going to have troubles, fortunately, the knowledge came back to me. However, almost all my family has trouble with stick shifts.
[sub]That took care of the fear I had that they would ask me to let them use the car.[/sub]
Another Brit checking in to say that IME stick-shifting skills are near enough 100% among drivers this side of the pond. Most of my driving has been on manuals tho’ we have an auto now, and I’ve always been one of the lucky ones who can make the transition from one to the other fairly seamlessly.
OTOH…
A few years ago I owned a Renault 21, and while it was in for repairs I had a hired Vauxhall Astra. Getting back into the Renault and putting my foot on the clutch it felt like someone had taken out the pedal and replaced it with a breeze block… The clutch on my Corsa was a little brutal too, but you adjust after a while.
Really?! :eek: I’m 25 (female), and I’m thinking back, and can’t remember any friends who couldn’t drive a stick when I was 18 or so… I worked with a girl who was 25 at the time and couldn’t drive a stick and we all thought it was an oddity… I’m now more aware of people not knowing stick and not feeling the need to learn.
I guess I met one such creature a couple months ago, but come to think of it, she was from the East Coast. Do we Westerners tend to have a higher manual-driving portion of the population?
I tried to buy a new Mazda Protege5 in May, but one thing that caused me to give it up was the difficulty in finding a manual. The asswads at the dealership kept trying to talk me into the nifty “sport automatic” crap they had. The feel is so much better on a manual transmission, especially in a car that can corner.
This must be another “Americanism” (for want of a better word) - I have been driving Automatics for 3 years now, and
I miss manual !
I have no problem getting into a manual (such as when I’m renting abroad), and getting right back into the swing of things - including in England, “double whammy” - no problemo.
And I think nothing of “riding the clutch”, instead of using the brakes, to stay in position at a hilly traffic light. Granted, not something everyone can do, but it seems natural to me. I cannot for the life of me get how someone will own a manual and allow him/her-self to shift poorly.
I wouldn’t think much of it either, if you did it in my car. Holding the car on the clutch for the duration of a traffic light cycle will burn the clutch out pretty quickly.
One of the things you are likely to have to execute in a UK driving test is starting on a hill without rolling backwards. But you hold the car on the hand-brake until the clutch is at biting point, then release the hand-brake.
Very true, IMHO. When I was learning to drive (late eighties, Oshawa, Ontario, Canada), no-one in my family had a manual-shift car (several had no car at all), and automatic-shift was the default at the driving school.
I was hoping to get a manual, but no such luck; there were only a limited number available for students who didn’t have ready access to family cars. As a result, I learned to drive in a Jeep.
It seems to me that first learning to drive in an automatic–getting used to control of the car and the environment of the road and all–then learning the complexities of manual shift, is a good way to learn. I still want to learn to drive manual though. The hard part about that is finding people who will let you learn on their cars…
BTW, I have never touched or shot a gun. I have seen them on police-officer belts and at the Royal Ontario Museum. I think this is a very rural/urban split.
I drive a stick every day. (Prefer it.) I think my dad was sort of impressed when I took it for a test drive, he didn’t think I knew how to drive it - Mom taught me. I’d say about 70% of my friends (females) can drive a stick. Then again, we’re all “country girls”.
Little brother can’t drive one, and pretty much refuses to learn. He’s 17.
I’m 19. GF can’t drive a stick. Dad can, Mom can’t. I’ve always bugged Dad to teach me how to drive a stick in his restored '57 Chevy, but somehow, he’s never shown interest…
I’d say it’s about half and half, depending on socio-economic background… a lot of the kids I went to high school with can’t, because their parents bought them cars with automatics, but at college the stereotypical car is a Saturn with a stick, appearently.
Of course I woudn’t do this for any length of time! But if I arrive at the end of a five-car queue and the light is turning green, then I will quite likely “ride” it for the few seconds it take to get going again.
I was referring more to the ability to hold a car in place this way than to the advisability of actually doing it.
Yeah, I guess it’s more of a show-off than sound driving technique… You have a point there!
Personal Relationships: My best friend drives a stick but her husband doesn’t, doesn’t know how, and doesn’t care to learn. My boyfriend, his cousin and his cousin’s wife all drive sticks (though the cousin’s wife only learned this year, when the auto trans in her car died and not only couldn’t she afford to have it replaced but her husband had a “sea” of stick shift VW Rabbits, Golfs and Jettas parked in their front yard: he “forced” her to learn).
Male coworkers: I have six of them and to my knowledge, only two of them presently own sticks, but they all say they know how to drive them.
Female coworkers: I have three. Two I know for a fact own cars with auto trans; I don’t know about the third, or even if the women with the auto trans cars at least know HOW to drive sticks (one might; she’s an older lady in her late 50s or early 60s who probably learned to drive on one).
Me: I do not know how to drive a car with manual transmission. I have enough problems fighting my fear of driving – with my automatic – as it is, and as TVeblen puts it (which my boyfriend and one of my Net buddies have also told me),
Even the IDEA of having to pay attention to what the CAR is doing ON TOP OF having to pay attention to the road, seeing and obeying traffic signals, where I’m going and dodge all the idiots and maniacs besides (I live in NJ and the reputation of “NJ Drivers” is well deserved!) simply overwhelms and scares the living shit out of me.
OK, final calculation time. For a fact, I know ten people who own or at least know how to drive cars with stick shifts, and including myself, only two who don’t. So of the drivers I know personally, 10 out of 12 of them drive, or are at least able to drive cars with manual transmission.
I’d consider learning stick and maybe even owning one (I do think it’s a good idea to know how, and I also know that it’s less expensive to buy a car with stick than one with auto trans), but I’ll never do it in NJ or any other trafficky crowded locations. I’d have to be living in a very rural area. There’d also have to be a place somewhere that my driving lessons and early practice driving could be conducted where there aren’t any other cars, and once I learned, the regular roads only had light traffic.
