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.

      •  Hunter2   ( @Hunter2@discuss.tchncs.de ) 
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        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.

    • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  •  chaorace   ( @chaorace@lemmy.sdf.org ) 
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    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.


    1. No, electrics don’t count. ↩︎

    2. No, semi-autos don’t count. ↩︎

    3. No, three-wheelers don’t count. ↩︎

    4. No, the 2006 Yamaha bikes don’t count because that line was a sales failure. ↩︎

    5. Ok, fine. Honda’s DCT bikes do count, but holy shit are they expensive! ↩︎

  •  coffee   ( @coffee@lemm.ee ) 
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    German, late 30s. Automatic cars are rather uncommon in Germany, we sure like our manuals. Not being able to push my car into high RPMs when needed to overtake or accelerate quickly takes the fun out of driving. I’d never switch to automatic as long as I still have both arms and legs. And yes I know kickdowns are a thing, but it really doesn’t compare.

  • I’m 237 years old, a retired phosphate miner in Nauru. I learned to drive on manual transmissions but now refuse to drive anything not powered by a turbo-encabulator, with the exception of Starfleet shuttlecraft. I also hate questions that encourage people to give away personal or census data without considering that is what’s happening.