this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
1 points (100.0% liked)

Asklemmy

43397 readers
1231 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[โ€“] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Agree that fun driving is essentially over, but I don't think automatic cars are as common outside North America.

In Europe ~80% of cars have manual transmission, mainly due to the (in the past) better fuel efficiency.

Modern automatic cars have often slightly better fuel efficiency, but they cost quite a bit more to buy and maintain, and very nearly everyone knows how to drive stick, so people usually don't bother.

Edit: As we stop having fun driving cars, should we finally also say goodbye to race biking, and fun motorcycling, once and for all?

[โ€“] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Disagree that fun driving is over. Have you driven a tesla?

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I have not.

Do they somehow make it fun to be queueing at a busy intersection?

Is driving 70km/h behind a truck somehow a blast if you're in a Tesla?

If so I'll make it a priority to try one out ASAP!