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Learning to drive stick is still a useful skill if you want to operate heavy trucks or ride motorcycles, neither of which tend to have an automatic transmission. It’s not an option that I would want to go away.

Also, I might have used valet parking once in my life. Handing my car over to someone who can’t drive stick is something I’m willing to live without—especially when you remember that many car thieves can’t drive stick, either ;)

I agree. I would content another point that might be contentious... I don't know the best way to say this, but I really do not like the idea of not being the authority, and not having mechanical control, over my vehicle. You may or may not be concerned by Michael Hasting's-incidents, but that isn't even necessary. In modern cars, any malicious or incompetent third-party can kill you. But either way, I really don't want authorities to have more opportunity to abuse their powers against political dissidents, whistleblowers, or even just ex-girlfriends or business partners anyways. That sort of thing happens in America even if mainstream media didn't tell you that.[2][3] In my opinion it's incredibly naive to believe this won't happen.

1-https://www.wired.com/2016/03/fbi-warns-car-hacking-real-ris...

2-https://youtu.be/M31ZCh1VeX8

3-https://denver.cbslocal.com/2016/09/28/report-across-us-colo...

It's also useful if you want to drive in almost any other part of the world. the entire traffic light system in most of europe (my only anecdotal example) is designed to show you the pre-green yellow to get ready for the green

Most big trucks and farm equipment are automatic now (source: family of truckers and farmers). The takeover was quite recent but I don't know any truck companies buying manuals these days other than owner-drivers who are enthusiasts about their trucks too (eg the type to modify and do them up).

I'm a massive car nut, I've owned and (amateur-)raced dozens of cars over the last 20 years and always went manual, but a couple years ago I switched to auto due to a bad leg and honestly, if my leg miraculously got better, I'd stay with an auto. Modern automatics are amazing. They shift faster than I ever could, and performance autos can still engine-brake into corners etc. I'm very much a convert for pure performance reasons as well as easy/comfort reasons.

I don't want manuals to go away though, and I don't think they will. There's lots of car manufacturers that still cater to small niche groups because these days with populations the size they are, a small niche group is still enough people to profit off. I think we'll still see performance cars and motorcycles with manuals for many years to come, but all mainstream/bulk cars will be auto only.

Indeed, even at the level of mundane passenger cars, I think automatics have gotten a lot better. My first car was a 1975 Dodge with 3-speed automatic. You kind of had to "play" it, in order to make it shift at the right time, e.g., for passing.

My family now has a Toyota minivan. The transmission shifts smoothly and intelligently, and downshifting with the gear selector when descending in the mountains seems to be no problem.

Even better, we rented a big passenger van this summer in Europe, and its transmission seemed to "know" when we were on a descent, and downshifted accordingly. It was pretty cool.

>Learning to drive stick is still a useful skill if you want to operate heavy trucks or ride motorcycles, neither of which tend to have an automatic transmission.

Learning how to shift gears is a small ammount of learning needed to drive those kinds of vehicles so once you decide to learn them you can just learn how to switch gears.

I learned how to drive 600 motorcycle before I ever drove a car, took me 1 hour to figure out gear shifting (well start/stop/second gear at least), learned uphill starts the next day. After 3-4 hours of driving I stopped stalling the bike. Took me 20-40 hours to get good balance and double that to become comfortable enough in traffic.

>> Valet parking is downright dangerous. My wife's car had its clutch literally melted by an incompetent valet driver, and the car was barely driveable when we got it back.

As someone who will only ever own manual transmissions, that's terrifying. Over the years I've had a handful of occasions where "mandatory valet" has been presented to me. I always refuse. Most of the time, I've been allowed to park my own car and bring my keys with me. If they refuse to allow me to do so, I find my own parking elsewhere. Only once have I had to actually abandon an event due to my stubbornness to hand my car over to a stranger working minimum wage.

To be fair, most of those "strangers working minimum wage" have been doing the job a while, and are more experienced with driving all kinds of vehicles than you or I would ever be. I worked A/V in a hotel for years, and being a car nut, I hung with the valets during breaks to chat cars, and a lot of those guys are in the job because they love cars and want to drive as many different ones as they can.

Yes there's always the chance of a valet who hasn't got a clue, but there's a chance of that in any job you've ever had contact with. We're just very attached to our cars (rightly so, mine is my prized possession!) so we're suitably and rightly nervous when handing them over. I'll do valet parking, but my car has a valet mode that limits the horsepower and is an auto so I don't have to worry about fried clutches anymore.

A few of my high school friends had part-time jobs as valets, including at some nice hotels. After hearing their stories I’ll never use valet parking.

Some cars have valet mode nowadays: https://media.chevrolet.com/media/us/en/chevrolet/news.detai...

Exactly why I never trust a valet with my car. Some may be great at driving a manual, but you just never know.

I have still not found a decent automatic transmission for mountain driving, off-road or on. The manual override makes it do-able but it's a jerky ride because you can't use the clutch to ease downshifting. All these years and most transmissions still want to race when you let off the brake. My Wrangler is better about it, but it's just not something the automatic transmission is really designed for.

My issue with automatic transmissions is that while they may be able to predict optimal settings in specific conditions, they cannot understand the overall conditions of traffic and operate accordingly.

An example is bumper to bumper traffic moving at high speed. Traffic may momentarily slow down abruptly, then pick up again. All automatic transmissions I have driven react the same when I release the gas, and then press it again as traffic speeds back up. They either stay in high gear, so the torque is not immediately available when traffic speeds up, or worse, they take a few seconds to downshift and then lunge forward.

With a standard transmission, I can put the car in neutral when I see brake lights ahead, slow down with the brakes if necessary, and when traffic starts moving faster, I drop into the appropriate gear for the speed I'm at and the torque I need.

You really shouldn't put the car in neutral if you're approaching upcoming traffic as you aren't in full control of the vehicle if you suddenly need power to get out of a developing situation.

You're also not getting the advantages of engine braking especially as most modern cars won't be pumping fuel to the engine if there is no load, instead your car is just idling in neutral.

As a former valet driver, would bet said valet probably drove up an inclined parking garage in the improper gear.