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.

  • Valdair@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • skarn@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      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?

        • skarn@discuss.tchncs.de
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          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!