this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2024
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It really doesn't take that much effort to learn
For someone with extremely high anxiety, yes it does. She’s like a chihuahua.
I have extremely high anxiety and can attest that it took a lot of time and effort to master a stick shift. It's definitely valid that your wife doesn't want to go through that struggle.
I forced myself. My first car was a 1992 Pontiac with a manual transmission. I didn’t even know how to drive it off the lot haha. I just wanted the damn thing.
Similar situation for me! I bought a Mazda6 and learned to drive it on the 30 min drive home. Had a buddy follow me to keep cars off my ass. It's definitely a skill I'm glad I learned, and I'm sad to see manual transmissions die off as EVs come into popularity. And honestly my daily driver is an EV now. But I still miss the precise level of control that comes with a manual, especially in Winter.
Throw her on a hill and she'll see that it's way easier than she expects to find the catch. I'm also pretty high strung, generally speaking, and when I couldn't get a hang of changing gears, the moment would devolve into sheer panic and make everything worse as I snubbed the engine with each attempt. And this was during parking lot practice with someone's old car that they were planning on junking anyways, so no need for that level of stress whatsoever.
But then I was taken to a little incline where I could clearly /feel it/ for the first time and after that, I just "got it".
There are whole countries where virtually everybody has to learn manual, even anxious people.
They just don't have the crutch of automatic gearboxes to fall back on.
Depends on the person. I had an ex I spent about 4 hours in a parking lot trying to teach and she never got the take off down. I think some people are incapable of driving a standard.
Not that I'm condoning this, but, take the keys to the other car away, and give them a headstart and I bet they'd figure it out precisely one commute's time away from their next shift at work.
I think part of the difficulty is people 'learning' to drive stick in a parking lot. That's good for 30 minutes, but you won't actually get a feel for it unless you properly drive around.
Honestly though, I think if someone is actually incapable of driving a manual transmission car, then they probably shouldn't have a license in the first place, it shows such a lack of fine motor control that it brings in to question their ability to manage other aspects of driving.
I just can't feel that point where the clutch engages/disengages so I keep stalling at take off or grinding the gears when shifting. Haven't tried again in a decade.
You're supposed to push the clutch fully to the floor when shifting. You should never grind gears unless you're about to money shift or something.
That could be the problem. I was told to shift when I felt the clutch take the power off the engine, and then give it a little gas when I feel the gears remesh. It was also on a 30 year old Peterbilt 5/10 speed hi/lo truck with everything worn out, so probably not the best thing to learn on
Learning on a transmission with >6 speeds is hard mode, they do take a little more thinking with the gear pattern than in a car. Synchro versions are not that hard if you're used to a regular manual but adding another thing to learn is not ideal when starting out. If it was a non-synchro variant then good luck getting someone to pick that up without a few solid hours of learning time.
If you were being taught by someone used to heavy trucks it makes sense why they didn't tell you to push the pedal right in - on many (all?) non synchro transmissions pushing the clutch all the way in brakes the input shaft and if you're moving you then have to resynchronise it with the gear speed in order to get into gear.
Note you don't actually have to push the clutch in all the way in a car either, all that really matters is getting it past the point where the clutch is fully disengaged. After all the clutch plate is either touching the flywheel to some degree or it's not touching, once it stops making contact pushing it further away doesn't make a difference. When first starting out though it's easier to just push the pedal all the way in - save thinking about finer details until you're comfortable with the basics.
Yeah no, you're better off learning on a car. And just know that what you will do at the beginning is different from what experienced drivers do, as they'll have developed a "feeling" for the car that you don't have yet, so just do it by the book.