Stick or Automatic?

[TheCracker]

I'm going to drive automatic, just because of where I live and what I have to deal with everyday, but I will not die w/o learning a stick shift. I might just get that g27 thing! Seems like it would really help. Thanks!

Driving in video games is nothing like driving in real life, in my opinion. Especially GT5.

The whole point of a true manual box is the physical interaction of you mechanically swapping the cogs. You can feel, via a set of rods and forks, the gears engaging and disengaging. It builds a level of mechanical sympathy and encourages you to be precise and well-timed in your movements. You are just not going to get that interaction from a video game (obviously!) so you might as well just use the flappy paddles or sequential shift on a gaming wheel.

 

[Danoff]

The first time I drove a car on a public road, was my first driving lesson on my 17th birthday, and it was a hill start. I had had a couple of tries at driving before that on private property, so I knew a bit about biting points and what not, but I could still feel my clutch leg shaking as I let it out. However, I got it moving and went up through the gears with no issues.

Your post makes it sound like you are coming at driving without seeing, or being driven in, a car. While I was growing up, all the time I was in a car, I was watching what my dad was doing and paying attention to what was happening, how the roads worked, and other traffic (that I could see.) All of that gives you an idea about what you are expected to do whilst driving.

Yea but... seeing someone else drive is not at all the same as doing it yourself. You've forgotten what it was like to learn how to drive a bit. I remember the first time I took a car on a public road wondering how the hell people were brave enough to do the speed limit. 55 mph!!! I already felt out of control and like a speed demon and the needle was barely hitting 45 mph. Cars were passing me like crazy. I wondered how anyone could even begin to contemplate speeding.

I think on my second day of driving on public roads I blew right through a stop sign.... didn't even see it. My driving instructor made a police siren noise when I did it, but he let me plow right through the intersection (I guess he checked it out as I was coming up to it).

Another mistake I made early on was to follow a truck through a stop light, it turned red while the truck was entering the intersection, but I couldn't see the light because of the size of the truck. I followed the truck and ran the red.

Merging with traffic is another headache, especially on some of the notoriously short on-ramps that we had where I was learning how to drive. On-ramps with no shoulder.

It's a hair raising experience. The world seems to move a million miles per hour compared to what you're used to, and everything is overwhelming. These days, of course, the task is to stay alert. It's easy to get "bored" (as one GTP member put it) while driving, and that's when you'll find yourself in an accident. I will say that when I moved to Los Angeles I experienced just a little bit of that "the world is moving a million miles per hour" sensation again as I white knuckled onto 6 lane freeways moving at 80+ mph with drivers leaving no room, and with no manners. I got used to that too after a while.

Anyway the point is there is a lot to take in the first time you hit public roads. It's better to do it in an auto. My first car was a manual, but all of the driving practice and driver's ed that I did was in an automatic, and I'm glad of that.

 

[homeforsummer]

Does depend where you're being taught to drive. My first several lessons were on empty country roads and around quiet residential streets, so it was effectively like driving without other traffic to worry about. By the time I started meeting heavy traffic I'd already grasped most of the basics. The gearbox is the thing you take longest to get used to when learning to drive, but nothing about my first lessons made me wish I'd started with an automatic.

Now learning to ride a motorcycle on the other hand... the hand/foot coordination on that is just crazy. Anyone wanting to ride a motorcycle I'd certainly recommend starting on a twist'n'go scooter first. I don't have my motorcycle licence because the training was just too much for me to take in in a few hours*.

Cars - manual cars, ones with crash 'boxes, dogleg 'boxes, anything - piece of piss compared to motorcycles.


*Subtext: I may have been useless at it

 

[avens]

I'm curious how old you are to turn this into an America vs World thing while managing to make a baseless and ignorant statement.

Says the guy with a powerpuff girls avatar

 

[daan]

You've forgotten what it was like to learn how to drive a bit.

Yeah, I'm old. I know...

The fastest roads I was on in my first few lessons were 40mph limits. I can remember being told, when driving in built up areas in a 30mph limit, to use first to get the car moving, 2nd up to 20, 3rd to 30, and 4th to hold 30. Only use 1st from a standstill. If rolling forward even slightly, then use 2nd. When braking to a stop, leave it in gear, then dip the clutch just before it stalls/you stop.

I probably stalled a few times during my 17 lessons but I don't recall that the clutch or gearbox was much of an issue.

 

[McLaren]

Says the guy with a powerpuff girls avatar

Bringing up something completely unrelated.

First sign the person has absolutely nothing worthwhile left to add to the discussion.

 

[Azuremen]

Says the guy with a powerpuff girls avatar

Thank you for answering my question, certainly has let me know what to expect from you.

 

[TheCracker]

I'd learned to control a car, change gear etc from the age of about 15. My dad took my sister and myself to a near by disused airfield to learn those 'skills' years before i was allowed on the open road. Didn't stop me from fluffing my first ever hill start on the morning of my 17th birthday when my mum let me drive us to school. Rolled back and almost hit the car behind. Driving many miles on a flat airfield won't teach you anything about hill starts

Like daan said, by the time i was old enough to take lessons, i'd already developed a fair deal of general 'road craft' just from studying my parents driving. I knew how to behave with other traffic, what all the road signs ment, understood the fundimentals of gear changing etc.

Some non-drivers never seem to bother playing the roll of understudy though. My wife didn't learn to drive when she turned 17, even though her father was a qualified instructor... and didn't try to learn until she got into her early 30's. After failing 3 times she's pretty much given up. But i can understand why she finds it so daunting, i've never known her to concentrate on or even notice what i'm doing when she's sat being a passenger. I presume she's always been this way, and consequently when she did get behind a wheel she only had the very vaguest idea of what its all about.

She's not an isolated case either. I know a guy who'se a driving instuctor, and he's said that it never ceases to amaze him the amount of people he starts to teach who have such little concept of how you drive a car or the process of driving with other road users. If you've never really concentrated on the process of driving whilst you've been a passenger in a car, i can see how people like that find it hard to concentrate when they're behind the wheel themselves.

 

[Danoff]

Surely you're not aiming that at me... suggesting that I never paid attention before I started learning?

 

[CyborgGT]

Plus, if you do take a driving school, I doubt that any of them will even have a manual car for you to learn on.

Mine did. Convertible Mustang, it was pretty cool. I think they've got a Camaro now, though.

I love autos in traffic, while manual is more for 'performance driving' in my opinion. It's always a nice skill to have though, you never know if the ability might give you a leg-up one day.

 

[Joey D]

I learned on both a manual and an auto. I think it's probably easier to learn the basics of driving on an auto, but it's not that much harder to drive a manual. Really whatever vehicle is available at the time that someone is willing to let you drive is good to learn on.

 

[Greycap]

I've had a chance to drive two similar cars of which one is a manual and the other is an automatic. My own car is a Volvo 940 turbo with a five speed manual while a friend of mine has one with a four speed manual. And, I have to say, the automatic gearbox is one of the most counterintuitive things I've ever encountered in a car.

Accelerating with an AT, that's easy, put your foot down and that's it. Only that the tachometer and speedometer don't agree at all with the torque converter doing its job. The first weird situation was when I wanted to slow down a bit, in a MT it's easily done by lifting the throttle and using engine braking. With the AT it certainly doesn't go that way, the box shifts up and keeps going on high idle throttle. Certainly not what I wanted. The same can happen with a lot more interesting results when powersliding on a slippery surface. In a MT lifting the throttle slightly reduces power and wheelspin, in an AT it causes an upshift and likely even more wheelspin. On top of those it's pretty much impossible to utilize the engine's low end torque in a heavy acceleration as the torque converter shoots up to stall speed or even higher instead of accelerating at low revs and maximum torque which would give the same performance at a noticably lower fuel consumption.

In my opinion AT is great for those who use the car as a means of getting from A to B with as little effort as possible. For those of us who want to control the car ourselves it's not an option.

And if someone says they drive AT because MT is too difficult I'd give a serious thought to turning their licence in ASAP because shifting is far from the hardest thing to do behind the wheel. I's certainly not rocket science seeing that probably 99% of driving licences in Finland (we have the "learn with AT, only be permitted to drive AT" thing too) are completed with MT and there's an alarming number of total idiots - who are still able to drive MT despite not being able to tell right from left or green from red - on the roads.

 

[Horde_R35]

If you learn to drive in a manual, you can drive an auto later on in life. If you learn in an auto, you cannot drive a manual later on in life. At least, that's the rules here.

Thats my opinion. Drive a manual and you can drive anything. Hell, in a manual you can actually drive .

 

[Goshin2568]

Yea but... seeing someone else drive is not at all the same as doing it yourself. You've forgotten what it was like to learn how to drive a bit. I remember the first time I took a car on a public road wondering how the hell people were brave enough to do the speed limit. 55 mph!!! I already felt out of control and like a speed demon and the needle was barely hitting 45 mph. Cars were passing me like crazy. I wondered how anyone could even begin to contemplate speeding.

I think on my second day of driving on public roads I blew right through a stop sign.... didn't even see it. My driving instructor made a police siren noise when I did it, but he let me plow right through the intersection (I guess he checked it out as I was coming up to it).

Another mistake I made early on was to follow a truck through a stop light, it turned red while the truck was entering the intersection, but I couldn't see the light because of the size of the truck. I followed the truck and ran the red.

Merging with traffic is another headache, especially on some of the notoriously short on-ramps that we had where I was learning how to drive. On-ramps with no shoulder.

It's a hair raising experience. The world seems to move a million miles per hour compared to what you're used to, and everything is overwhelming. These days, of course, the task is to stay alert. It's easy to get "bored" (as one GTP member put it) while driving, and that's when you'll find yourself in an accident. I will say that when I moved to Los Angeles I experienced just a little bit of that "the world is moving a million miles per hour" sensation again as I white knuckled onto 6 lane freeways moving at 80+ mph with drivers leaving no room, and with no manners. I got used to that too after a while.

Anyway the point is there is a lot to take in the first time you hit public roads. It's better to do it in an auto. My first car was a manual, but all of the driving practice and driver's ed that I did was in an automatic, and I'm glad of that.

You make it out like driving is this tremendously hard task that requires herculean mental effort 100% of the time or else you end up in a fireball on side of the road. Since when did driving standard become an "advanced driving technique". It's just driving! Again, I don't want this to become US vs world, but the rest of the world apart from North America manages to learn in and drive manual cars every single day without hundreds of deaths from the "dangers" of driving stick.

It would be like if in some random country, they all started driving cars with automatic brake and gas. All you did was the steering, and people from that country said "Don't learn to drive in a car with manual gas and brake, that's too much for you to do! It's dangerous."

Doesn't that sound ridiculous? Well no offense but that's about how ridiculous your argument sounds.

 

[Parker]

Personally I prefer a manual as I get much more control while I'm towing and it puts more power to the ground. I also enjoy driving a manual car more as well but ultimately it really doesn't matter. Find something you like and go from there.

 

[Danoff]

You make it out like driving is this tremendously hard task that requires herculean mental effort 100% of the time or else you end up in a fireball on side of the road.

Well it is a difficult task to learn.

Again, I don't want this to become US vs world, but the rest of the world

Ever wonder why you have to keep saying that?

apart from North America manages to learn in and drive manual cars every single day without hundreds of deaths from the "dangers" of driving stick.

Not saying there are going o be hundreds of deaths from it. But I am saying that the more things you have to learn simultaneous, the more likely you are to screw one of them up. That's just logic.

It would be like if in some random country, they all started driving cars with automatic brake and gas. All you did was the steering, and people from that country said "Don't learn to drive in a car with manual gas and brake, that's too much for you to do! It's dangerous."

If that happened, I would advise that people (optimally) learn to drive on a car that eliminated the brake and gas at first and just concentrate on steering. Then switch to a car that has brake and gas. Then switch to a car with a manual transmission.

It's not very hard to see the logic here. It's better to ease in to learning how to drive than to dive in the deep end and hope you swim.

 

[Crash]

When has that actually been suggested though?

My understanding of those similar comments was one of legality, rather than skill. In the UK, if you take your test in an automatic car, then you are legally only allowed to drive an automatic thereafter, unless you subsequently take a manual test.

The law doesn't prohibit you from learning the skills to drive a manual car if you did the auto test first, but if you have an auto-only license you do need to take another test to drive stick.

It's the same in several other territories. It's all about legality and nothing at all to do with inability to learn on a manual afterwards.

Oh no, I'm not referring to that at all. I know what you said is the case in some jurisdictions, I even pointed that out in one of my earlier posts in this thread. I'm just more frustrated with those who keep saying that if you "care" about driving or "like" driving, or want to be a "good" driver, then you have to only learn on a manual, as if implying that the OP cannot learn to drive a manual after starting on an automatic, and so will miss out on driving "driver's cars" for the rest of his life.

 

[Spree]

I think you should drive Automatic first, and then go to Manual, when you are ready.

 

[CamaroKid266]

I think learning stick is a great skill to learn, and comes in handy sometimes but it comes down to what kind of driver you are. I personally enjoy driving and want to make it as fun as possible, so I drive stick. if you just like to get groceries and get from point a to b, auto is fine.

 

[JER_CREST]

HURAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am all for stick shift transmissions.

 

[Danoff]

I think learning stick is a great skill to learn, and comes in handy sometimes but it comes down to what kind of driver you are. I personally enjoy driving and want to make it as fun as possible, so I drive stick. if you just like to get groceries and get from point a to b, auto is fine.

HURAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am all for stick shift transmissions.

I think you both missed the point of the thread. The thread is not about whether to drive stick or automatic, the thread is about whether to learn how to drive on a stick or automatic.

 

[JacoJa]

@MatskiMonk, Pagey279, Azuremen:

Good points, I actually agree with everything you guys are saying. I just can’t help thinking that since we are all car enthusiasts on GTPlanet we have more of an interest in driving, so driving an Auto or Manual has a minor effect on the way we drive. I think my theory only applies to Joe Public.

 

[oopssorryy]

I say auto at first. It's easier at first which if a big help. Once you're comfortable with auto learn manual. Thet way you're not stressed out about remembering the rules of the road while you try to balance the clutch and throttle.

 

[Spree]

I say auto at first. It's easier at first which if a big help. Once you're comfortable with auto learn manual. Thet way you're not stressed out about remembering the rules of the road while you try to balance the clutch and throttle.

Definitely the way to go.

 

[JER_CREST]

i first learned to drive stick and still prefer to drive that way.

 

[Spree]

Yes, but where he lives it's very hilly, as Crash said, and lots of traffic.

 

[XPOWER180]

I'm shocked at how many American drivers can't use a manual, it's borderline pathetic as it's not even remotely difficult - it's laziness. I would never even consider a car with an automatic gearbox, it's manual or nothing. No true driving enthusiast would consider an automatic to be better than a manual in any way at all.

 

[niky]

Want to learn how to "feel" your way down the road?

Want to become a driver with the reflexes and skills to catch slides before they happen?

Want to be "safer" because you have total control and awareness?

Want to be a "true enthusiast"?

Whoops. My bad. Automatics.

 

[Tesla]

Again, I don't want this to become US vs world, but the rest of the world apart from North America manages to learn in and drive manual cars every single day without hundreds of deaths from the "dangers" of driving stick.

Please regale me with your tales of travelling around the world and taking note of whether they all use automatic or manual transmission. I've never seen anyone in Australia driving a manual except my mother, who learnt to drive stick in the UK anyway. Does this mean that nobody in Australia drives stick? Of course not.

 

[Ridox2JZGTE]

Want to learn how to "feel" your way down the road?

Want to become a driver with the reflexes and skills to catch slides before they happen?

Want to be "safer" because you have total control and awareness?

Want to be a "true enthusiast"?

Whoops. My bad. Automatics.

This should be more like it :

The perfect car to learn how to drive, Tsuchiya approved it
Drive it down a mountain pass, and reap the reward.