I learned to drive in a manual. Now that my son is getting close to driving age, I wanted to teach him in a manual first, like I learned - and then I found out it's damned near impossible to _find_ one any more.
This is akin to teaching a kid to ride a 21 speed bike. They can probably get up to that rather quickly, all told, but just learning the basics of balance and pedaling will already be difficult enough.
Similarly, just learning the basics of the car will already be tough. Why add to it? Why not take away power steering? Because it would make it harder.
When I was tall enough, he'd have me move his car around on our long driveway so I learned to feather the clutch for start/stop maneuvers in first gear. By the time I was getting my learner's permit and hitting the road for the first time, I already had the theory and practice for the drive-train and could focus on the more important traffic rules and vigilance.
I still remember his "graduation" test for me, which was taking me on a ride to a nearby very steep hill and parallel parking. Then, he gave me the keys and said very sincerely that I needed to pull out, drive around the neighborhood, return, and park back in the same spot without burning the clutch and without stalling the engine...
To that end, I just don't know. I expect I will have an issue teaching my children. Biking has already thrown me some curve balls. Nothing insurmountable. But the more you have on the bike, the harder it is for the learner to get it going.
I mean, I hate biking without my shoes that attach to the pedal nowdays. I would not at all attempt to teach my kids on such a bike for a while.
I also hate attaching my feet to the pedals. I do not want to confess that I've hit the ground in a very undignified manner more than once because I couldn't get my feet unclipped in time :(
Nowadays, i feel more stable clipped in.
And i know countersteering is a thing. Don't really process it, though.
The shop that built my engine told me they wouldn't have done it if I was under 40.
Though to be fair, the latest iteration of the stability and traction control is pretty amazing. Short of turning it off, or driving with inappropriate tires for conditions, I can't really get the car out of shape without turning off the nannies. I can hang it out a bit but I could never manage to pull off those beautiful crowd-killing losses of control that Mustangs seem to apt to pull at Cars & Coffee events around the country.
So aside from just driving too fast and making physics an insurmountable issue, they could probably drive it pretty safely if I somehow made it so the nannies could not be disabled.
I haven't driven a nanny car and don't know what they're like. They should have a "teenager" mode which detunes it to 100HP :-)
Driving is easy. Interacting safely with the other people on the road is what is hard.
A few years later they sold the car and both my sisters learnt to drive in more modern automatics.
My learning experience was miserable but after learning in that old crappy wagon I can drive just about anything now. Once you have parked a car without power steering any other parking you have to do in a modern car feels like a complete non issue.
Our truck has bad power steering. Such that it often handles as if it didn't have it. Holy crap is that a pain.
I drive a manual steered car. It's no problem at all. It's more physical than fingertip control, sure, but I like that. You can feel the road better.
I own a manual currently. One big disadvantage (or possibly an advantage...) is when Friends ask to borrow car you need to ask "Can you drive a manual?" 9/10 times I've found answer is no.
Just look up survivor bias sometime. It is a thing. This is an common refrain of it.
What? Have you even driven anything that's not a big truck without power steering (and I don't mean a car with power steering disabled). It's not _that_ big a difference, if at all.
You would clearly stop short of taking away vision. Why not make people drive with a vehicle that doesn't have a rear window? All told, shouldn't be that big of a deal. That said, https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2018/05/02/backup-... was a headline story for a reason.