Cars - Do you drive a manual or automatic?

[Mermaid]

I think most Americans don't know how to drive a manual.

[vorlon13]

There is sometimes a real laugh in the news when some miscreant attempts to hijack a car, and fails to note it's a manual transmission, and the resulting police chase is sad and pathetic.

[abaris]

I always drove manual. Getting older I set my eyes on automatic. But there are several advantages to driving manual. Especially with critical road conditions, such as heavy rain, snow or ice. Just hit the clutch and allow the wheels to turn freely and you get back control, even when you're already sliding.

[zebo-the-fat]

I have been driving since I was 19 (now 61) always had manual gearbox cars until recently, currently driving an automatic feels very odd to come to a stop without having to use the clutch .. I keep expecting it to stall! It seems a lazy way to drive, easy but with less control

[paulpablo]

I just started taking driving lessons - I'm driving a manual shift car, like everybody else in my country because it's how you get your drivers license. I did quite a few KM, I start on shift 1 and a few seconds later I need to step the clutch and shift to 2 immediately - I never got to shift to 3 because I'm only 2 lessons in, and we're taking it slowly. Driving is fun, not as hard as it looks. 

How do automatics work? Do you have to ever shift at all? Is there a third pedal like the clutch or is it just the accelerator and brake? Did you take drivers license with an automatic or manual? BTW, the car I'm using is a ford, dunno the model, and it's diesel.

I'll probably buy a manual car when I get my drivers license, pretty much 80% of cars sold are manual, come cheaper and generally fuel in Europe is so expensive that it's easier to come a across a fuel efficient car that is manual. Why do some parts of the world like the US and Canada prefer automatic, and why?

I live in the UK and I just passed my test last year doing it in an automatic.  I just wanted to drive quickly and easily so that's why I did it.

I don't understand the horror people in the UK have over driving automatics.  When I used to tell people I was learning to drive in an automatic they reacted like I'd just told them I was going to take up paedophilia as a hobby.

I had people telling me that if I drive an automatic I won't be able to randomly borrow friends cars that are manual, I've never had to borrow a friends car ever and I never would since it's illegal to drive on a car you're not insured on.

I had people say they're unreliable I don't know about this but I've had my pre owned automatic car for just over 1 year now and there's nothing wrong with it.

As for fuel consumption it's difficult for me to say since I've only driven an automatic but if there even is a difference I can't imagine it's that much, I think it's more dependant on engine size and how aggressively you accelerate.

[robvalue]

I've always driven manual. When we got our most recent car I test drove a couple of automatics, and I liked them. Getting used to not having to put my foot on the clutch as I slowed to a halt was weird. There is no clutch! So my foot was freewheeling in mid air. Haha! Even though I'd driven nothing but manual for 20 years, I picked up automatic almost right away. I imagine going the other way would be much more difficult.

This guy was telling me about a new type of car which drives itself, you just enter the postcode, and it then takes you there. Unless he was totally having me on, he reckoned such cars aren't far away from being available and are already in the testing stage. My immediate reaction was, "They'll be unsafe!". But then I quickly realized that even the safest human drivers regularly make mistakes, which computer ones never would. They'd be calculating stopping distances all the time, they would notice everything more consistently and drive at safer speeds. I think the roads will be much safer once this is the norm.

It better be real. If it wasn't, he pulled one hell of a practical joke on me. I should really go look it up.

[LastPoet]

Manual. Quite apart from better fuel economy, you can still roll start the engine on a flat battery. With an automatic gearbox, you're knackered.

Yep. Give it some momentum, engage the second or third, release the clutch. I once got stuck on the line up the ramp to the lisbon 25th April bridge. Asked the others to give some room behind me and even started it on reverse. The problem? The starter motor was busted.

[robvalue]

I've always been raised to keep myself separated from the automatic folk. Interbreeding is strictly forbidden.

[I_am_not_mafia]

Learning to drive myself. I started at 20 and am now 41 but each time I've learnt to drive and am ready to take my test I end up moving somewhere and having to wait again before I have the money to continue. It's possible the same thing might happen this time if I get offered a job at the end of the year. I actually had to retake my theory test last week because it's expired since the last time I took it. There wasn't even a theory test back in 1994.

Anyway, I've been learning on manual cars since I've started and until this thread that I forgot that automatics actually exist. I'm curious now as to what it must be like driving one. I'm wondering if automatics are preferable in America because they have larger roads and flatter, wider expanses of land. Driving around Edinburgh which is built on several hills, I can't count the number of times I've had to get into a lower gear for either going up or to use as an engine break coming down.

[robvalue]

Automatics are getting much smarter now, and you can also get hybrids that you can swap into manual whenever you want, or else cap the gears to help you with hills. I find them relaxing to drive as you just have to do less! Pulling away is much faster, because you're not screwing around with the clutch and gears. You just press the accelerator and off you go. It feels like magic! There is only the gas and the brake pedal.

In the ones I drove, you hold down the break as a sort of clutch to move the car from park (neutral) to drive (going forward) or reverse. You then just hit the gas and you're off. And if you put it in reverse by mistake, you're off very fast in the wrong direction