And where are you from? And how old? Not “do you” but just if you know how.
I’m in the US, mid 30s and can (and do) drive a manual transmission.
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In Germany nearly everyone can drive manual. Used to be that if you didn’t learn how to drive manual in driving school, you weren’t allowed to drive manual with your license.
31,Sweden
Yes, and I prefer a manual car to an automatic. It keeps me a lot more dialed in while driving.
35, living in Europe, I had to re-learn manual. I had only automatics in Latin America. It is certainly more fun and I feel I’m actually driving.
Where in Latin-America?
I can, not well, but I can. damn hill starts.
Not sure how common it is now but some cars had a “hill holder” feature that would hold the brake for you when starting on a hill. Makes that whole process much, much easier.
Just pull the parking brake and accelerate until you feel the car slightly raising and then drop the parking brake.
Eventually you get a feeling for it and drop the parking brake before it’s “fighting” the accelerator.
This might sound trivial to some, but I know several people that never use the parking brake in these situations and instead do a manic race with their feet and the car drops a couple meters back and they over accelerate to compensate.
Yes, this is how I do it. I also do this when reversing out of parking spaces. Because my car’s reverse requires pushing down on the stick and is close to 1st, I’ve saved myself from driving into polls a few times.
Yeah, I learned the parking brake method.
A couple meters, you say? Sounds like a great way to trash your transmission.
A couple meters, you say? Sounds like a great way to trash your transmission.
It drives (pun intended) me nuts, but they don’t listen to reason. And the worst of all, is that they got their license in a hilly town and say they weren’t taught that. While I learned in a flatter place and was taught this.
This is the way. Drove a tiny 4cyl manual in SF for way to long
Hands down one of the worst “feature” of new vehicles IMO. If you need help on a hill, either use the parking brake like everyone else, learn to drive better, or just drive an auto.
Older diesels had a handy feature for it too, in the way of a hand throttle.
When getting your driving license, you are supposed to know 3 so called ‘special manoeuvres’. Hill start, backwards turn and parallel parking. During your test you have to perform 2 of these (chosen by the examiner). Everyone always hopes that one of these two will be the hill start because it’s by far the easiest one.
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23, US. Yes, but I find them pointless for daily driver cars. Modern automatics are more fuel efficient and just make more sense because they’re much easier to operate and less annoying in stop and go traffic.
They’re great for off-roading and racing, but outside of those use cases automatics are just better.
honestly i don’t understand what makes them better for racing. can the auto not be tuned differently to prioritize speed and acceleration over fuel efficiency?
I mostly agree except I drive older vehicles out of warranty. Manuals last longer and are cheaper to fix so depending on what vehicle I’m buying I may look specifically for a manual if it’s a known “weak spot” for that particular vehicle.
My car has a manual transmission. I learned to drive on a manual transmission. I prefer it. When I drive a car with automatic transmission, I step on its nonexistent clutch.
Yes.
In Europe you basically have to be handicapped to not learn to drive manual. Most people get the manual driving license because it allows you to drive both, whereas the automatic one doesn’t.
Manual transmission was and often still is cheaper, often cheaper to repair, often more reliable, often uses less fuel, and in cheap and less powerful cars the combination is often better. Because there are so many manual cars here, including at rental places, it’s a no brainer to learn to drive manual.
This being said, that’s changing. Also, less and less young people are getting a driving license due to affordability and cars no longer being the status symbol they once were.
In Europe you basically have to be handicapped to not learn to drive manual.
That’s changing though, I see many people taking their driving lessons in EVs, which in turn means they’ll only be able to drive automatics. I guess that won’t bother them too much as they’ll probably only want to drive EVs anyway, or else they would’ve chosen to take their lessons in a regular manual like most people
or else they would’ve chosen to take their lessons in a regular manual like most people
More likely that it’s often their parents’ car, I suspect. Depending on where you live, practising in your own car can save thousands in driving school fees.
But for the non-Europeans reading, the thing is that with the manual license you get to choose. You can drive both. Automatic license, you can never drive a manual.
Rental companies are almost certain to replace their cars with EVs sooner rather than later. But if you want to rent a bigger van, those’ll likely be ICE for a while longer. A van like that can easily do hundreds of thousands of kms. That’s a lot for a van that does the occasional move.
New automatics have lower fuel usage than manuals.
Manuals suck so hard, they gave me one when my car broke down, and my brother in christ there is almost no benefit to it.
I can choose my own gears on my dual-clutch automatic too, and it’s better in every way to the manual.
31, Germany, I can’t drive at all. City kid.
This thread is an amusing display of sample bias. Only people that want to respond yes and brag about it bothering to respond.
In reality only about 2/3rds of people in the US can drive stick and almost no one owns manual cars.
I’ve never driven a manual car. I’ve had people be like “You can’t drive manual?!” and then I would respond “So are you going to teach me?” The answer is always No, of course not, not in their car (assuming they even owned a manual, which none do anymore). My parents had manual cars but sold them 10+ years before having me.
I understand how a clutch works. It wouldn’t be difficult to learn. But what reason or motivation is there to learn when almost no cars are manual? They total something like 2% of new car sales. If you’re buying something like a 718 GT4 RS or a 911 GT3 RS for maximum driving engagement that’s great, but those cars are priced for the 1% of the 1%.
Even if you had a fun car, which I do, the drive to work is stop-and-go, roads are full, even the fun country backroads are filled with traffic on weekends, forests are burned down, gas is eye-watteringly expensive if you have a slightly performant vehicle. The time to have fun driving cars was 40 years ago.
Germany, 25, yup
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Of course, 28, French. 99,99% of people here drive manual (or at least know how to).
UAE, mid 20s and I know how to drive a manual but went with an automatic.
Yes, but only on motorcycles. That’s because there’s no such thing as an automatic motorcycle[1][2][3][4][5], so you have to learn manual if you want to ride one. Unfortunately this skill doesn’t transfer well to manual driving because on bikes you operate the clutch with your hand and the shift with your foot. I’m not terribly worried about that, though… I’ve literally never even been on the inside of a manual drive car before!
For context: I’m mid-20s from the American south.
I can and do drive a manual transmission. I’m 34 and in the US Midwest. It’s just more fun to drive. My car isn’t even fast, but dropping a couple gears to pass someone never gets old.
Yes, unless you want to still have an engine, then no.
