Bring Back the Stick Shift
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I'm a cyclist, so I can see from above who's eating and using a cellphone. Stick shift is no barrier.
I also drive a stick shift car. Shifting requires no attention. It's a reflex, by necessity because you have to pay attention to traffic. The first couple weeks of teaching your kids to drive stick shift are hair raising because it distracts them from driving safely.
If stick shift cars were safer, it would have been reflected in our insurance rates, right? I don't believe it.
Sure, stick shift is fun, under the right conditions. And it gives a feeling of involvement and a special skill involved in driving a car, other than just getting from A to B in one piece. I get it. But at the same time, I also feel that shifting a car a million times is enough to prove that I can do it, and I'm ready for my next car to be automatic.
And I suspect that in practice that the fuel economy advantages of stick shift were erased by the "fun to drive" aspect. I've never been in a stick shift car, where the driver chose shift points for economy rather than for power and acceleration.
Desperate lack of imagination there. People do all of the following:
- shove cellphone between ear and shoulder
- temporarily hold food in teeth
- change gear with food hand
- drive with gear hand, jam wheel with knees for the second it takes to change gear
- drive for long periods in the wrong gear; you can do almost all your urban driving in third or second.
Surprising things are possible with partially failed manual transmissions. My wife drove back from the Scottish highlands in a car where the shift was almost totally seized - took both hands to wedge it into third, and left in there. I've driven a car with an ECU failure that meant it stalled if asked to idle, so every downshift required a rolling restart and it was extremely inconvenient to stop at junctions - I had to plan ahead and roll through slowly.
In hindsight I don't know why we didn't just call an ambulance.
In hindsight I don't know why we didn't just call an ambulance
Not always. Hypermiling is a fun pastime that I enjoyed while I drove stick. And it kept me engaged in the act of driving. It’s almost like treating each stretch of roadway like a golf course: how can I get from A to B with the least amount of energy used given the lay of the land, speed limits, traffic signals, and the behavior of other road users?
My first car was a 4-speed stick-shift Fiero, and I remember an automotive tech telling me to ignore their shifting recommendations because “then you’d be doing 35 in 4th gear.” Even at 16 I thought, “well if that’s more efficient, why wouldn’t I do it?” I can accept that I have weird metrics for “fun to drive” though.
I do this every time the fuel light comes on!
But the car companies barely even make money on small cars, and this particular product line (Toyota Scion) was discontinued.
If the market shrinks to the point where something is a specialty item, then the price difference can invert itself, which is what I think happened in the US.
stick shift won't deter people from doing whatever, I sadly admit that at time I lose focus by trying to manipulate my cellphone when in GPS mode
What I find does help is that my Supra does not have automatic-anything, apart from cruise control. Everything is manual. If I want the car to do something, I have to explicitly set a control to do it. In the process, I'm generally constantly aware of the state of the car, from the lights to the heater. Granted, I did fit parking sensors, but I conditioned myself to never rely on them 100% - shifting into Reverse, I always turn around and watch out the rear window. Even factory-fitted sensors may miss bollards or posts. I have no reversing camera, so I'm acutely aware of the width and length of the Supra when manoeuvring in tight spaces.
I am in agreement that the various electronic driver aids that are sold as safety options are dangerous in the long-term, however. Many cars have automatic braking systems. Not only is this potentially unreliable under certain circumstances, but overconfidence in the system can lead to exactly what the author suggests - the driver's brain shunts authority for panic-braking to the automatic system, without the driver being consciously aware of it, and looks to the next thing on the priority list. Human brains are phenomenally good at outsourcing things. The more we automate, the more we wind up withdrawing attention. Overconfidence in Tesla's Autopilot system is at least partly responsible for the deaths so far (now, I'm not blaming the drivers; they did what anyone could reasonably expect, they shunted responsibility for the car to the computer. No matter how much Tesla disclaim that the driver must supervise the technology and be ready to take control at all times, this isn't going to happen in practise because the shift in priorities happens subconsciously).
There's no clear solution here; the driver aids are set up with the best of intentions, but they may wind up causing more harm than good even to an experienced driver.
And I do choose shift points for economy from time to time :) Sure, sports-shifting is great fun, especially with a performance car, but the only way I can afford to run the car at all is to save fuel where I can, and having full manual control allows me to do that. Roughly 90% of my driving involves shifting before 3k RPM. It's only when joining highways that I let the Supra off the leash :D
Over the course of my life, I've noticed a remarkable improvement in the behavior of automatic transmissions, going from "jerky" to "smooth" for lack of better terms. While overseas last year, I drove a large Mercedes van that even sensed when I was descending a hill, and downshifted the way I would have done it in a stick shift car.
Also, modern automatics tend to change their behavior all the time according to mood. There is nothing more counterproductive than an "adaptive" transmission (or other system). The word "adaptive" simply means that it isn't responsive when you do something different. Which is bad.
And of course, the newer SUV gets much worse mileage anyway. If a couple mpg really matters that much to you, you can always drive less too. The earth doesn't care if you get twice the mileage or drive half as much.
It makes me a little sad, though.
Things you can only do with a manual transmission:
* On any road with a slight decline, easily roll back a bit just by pressing the clutch, no need to put the car in reverse.
* Roll/push start when your battery is drained!
* Downshift exactly when you want to to blow past cars/large trucks on the highway.
* Have your passenger laugh at you when you accidentally stall the car.
* Similarly have your passenger laugh at you when you accidentally grind the gears.
* An Uber driver I got in Detroit told me a story of when his car was broken into and attempted to be stolen, only for the perpetrator to give up when he discovered the stick shift he did not know how to operate. Very handy!
* Get so used to down shifting to first when coming to a stop that you instinctively put automatics in park when doing the same.
* Impress noobs with your effortless acceleration from stop on a steep hill. The ladies love this.
* Bond with other stick shift drivers by collectively looking down upon the masses who never learned. Fucking kids these days (Jeep Wranglers with automatics!? Ugh!).
Clearly the superior driving experience all around.
> I realized I wasn’t watching the backup camera, nor was I looking out of the rear window. I was only listening for those “audible proximity alerts”
Ah, so this person, in addition to not being an expert on the topic, is a terrible driver. Maybe instead of giving them space for an opinion piece, we should be looking into whether they should have a driver's license.
Lack of attention is a real problem. So maybe the right answer is a heavy investment in buses and trains where most people don't have to be wasting their lives paying attention to driving.
Plus it doesn't matter if stick shift makes drivers safer. They're going away. Transmissions are a way of working around the inadequacies of internal combustion engines. Electric motors don't need them.
This isn't really an event that allows any extrapolation to their driving skills. And backing out of a parking space isn't really a high stakes manoeuvre. Plus, the sensors are probably close to human's capabilities now anyway. The exhortation not to trust them is about liability more than safety.
In any case, one should applaud their honesty. If I'm wrong and this behaviour is dangerous after all, pointing it out to a few hundred thousand readers, many of whom engage in the same practice without even noticing, is likely a more significant contribution to safety than anyone in this threat will accomplish in their lifetime.
I'm confused. It looks like back up cameras may help prevent accodents but not to some standard the author has for the technology. The author doesn't present any evidence that the tech is actually making us less safe, but it's still highly dependent on humans. So do away with it just because?
People made the same argument all the time about fly-by-wire on airplanes, on cars, etc.
There are also compensating factors. We know that cell phones / tablets / etc are also factors. Yet these technologies blunt some of the negative outcomes introduced by other technologies.
Tesla's autopilot is a great new technology. I don't trust it with my life - I keep my hands on the wheel and I monitor what the system is doing, but it keeps my car safe if i happen to get distracted, or if i don't see a car swerving into the lane.
The reason is that the image from a backup camera is displayed on a screen. Cars with backup cameras display information on the screen when the car is moving forward, which can distract the driver.
I don't think that means we should do away with backup cameras, but I do think we need to consider the overall impact of a safety feature, not just statistics on scenarios that feature is intended to address.
I agree that always on displays are distracting, especially at night. I prefer to drive with as little light as possible in the car.
I suppose the author also thinks we should sell automobiles without traction control. After all, a person that can't mentally delegate the maintanence of traction will have to manually monitor for traction by feel. Maybe we should also eliminate automatic windscreen wipers, so that people can't mentally delegate that task and will have to manually actuate them like on an old Land Rover.
I'm of the mindset that it's a good thing when people can spend more mental energy on their surroundings, and less on operating the mechanical systems of their vehicle. The fact that people like the author don't pay attention to their surroundings because they think a modern car can somehow drive itself is a separate issue.
It's been studied and shown in the context of shared streets, switching the side of the road your country drives on (Sweden - the accident rate went down markedly), seat belts, ABS, crash helmets for motorcyclists, and in a non motoring context in sky diving and ski helmets.
Those features are a good thing when people do spend more mental energy on their surroundings - yet it's been shown time and time again that they don't. They have extra bandwidth to chat, listen to music, eat a burger and yell at the kids in the back, or send a text message. In other words to increasingly be a passive passenger. That they shouldn't and a few good and diligent drivers don't is irrelevant.
Cars should be built for the majority of their users, not the presumption that everyone acts like a tiny minority.
This famous example seems to be the opposite of the others you highlight. Reversing lane directions forced people to concentrate more on their surroundings, and be more cautious, not less, unlike seat belts, ABS, helmets, lane assist, and other safety features. Perhaps that is the solution: make the surroundings less safe, so people are forced to pay attention, as many safe streets advocates have been pushing for decades.
Shared streets seem to work on similar lines - removing right of way for traffic, and the assistance of lights, signs, markings puts drivers in a higher state of vigilance almost by default. Personally I'd like to see them far more widely adopted.
Things like lane assist, ABS etc seem to come with a cost. Increasingly for the vulnerable outside the ever more reinforced and protected vehicle.
Some, like lane assist, may eventually turn out to even be counter productive to overall figures. I'm not sure if there's been much research on the real world consequence of many of the newer ideas yet.
Friends and family members of mine with adaptive cruise control, lane keeping, blind spot detection, etc seem to trust those things completely. I hopefully don't need to explain why this is an issue.
That is not a good example. Perfect traction control is beyond human limit even if the person in the driver's seat is maximally attentive.
Traffic Aware Cruise Control improves safety as well. I set my gap at 7 car lengths giving me a safety buffer that I've never had before. I don't think that'd even be possible with a stick.
In open traffic, I prefer to just maintain constant speed and move left one lane whenever someone is slow in front. That would be a cool setting for a cruise control.
Google tells me that 7 * 200 inches / 60 mph is 1.32 seconds which isn't that long. But in reality, the car in front of you is braking and you are braking. So the real measurement is when they hit the brakes can you react in time to hit the brakes. Not gonna do that math. Maybe the CA drivers handbook has a table.
However, 7 car lengths feels to me like a lot and 7 car lengths with TACC seems very safe. Yeah, people merge into my gap and so I drop back again; big whoop. It also reduces dings from pebbles getting kicked up by the car in front.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsa/Safety1nNum3ers/august2015/S1N_S...
When I'm stopped on a steep hill and see someone coming up behind me I've tried rolling back a little to discourage getting too close only to find (multiple times) that the driver just lays on the horn and then proceeds to slide right up to my bumper. ... (don't even get me started on all the bay area drivers that drive around at night with their headlights off and are completely unresponsive to light-flashing, ...)
On some roads I've adopted a practice of just going up the hill slowly enough when there is traffic in front of me so that I'm able to stop at the intersection where the hill has flattened out, rather than one car back where it's still really steep and then it doesn't matter if someone wants to wear my bumper as a mustache.
Yeah, on, but you're also from the flattest country in the world :)
In driving tests they will mark you down if you use the mirrors for switching lanes or reversing.
wait, how are you supposed to safely change lanes without looking at mirrors?
I've got something like that on my driver side mirror (although not that one...I think I got mine in the small section of random car accessories common in US grocery store chains). When looking straight at the side view mirror the convex mirror nicely fills the gap between when something approaching from the next line disappears from the side view mirror and appears in my peripheral vision.
On my previous car I also put one on the passenger side mirror but I've found that it isn't that helpful, because (1) the head turns more to look at that mirror, meaning peripheral vision covers farther back, and so I've already got them in that when they disappear from the mirror, and (2) the small mirror is too far away to see well.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Ampper-Blind-Mirror-Frameless-Convex/...
You're free to use both (I do), but you only need (and are required) to look behind to ensure there isn't a car in the blind spot or just behind it.
There's a reason why in many states you need only one side view mirror. In some states, merely having the rear view mirror suffices (i.e. no side view mirrors required).
I’ve been using this method since before this article. I still look, but there’s never a car when I look.
Except for an electric motor.
Everything else about the Accord is significantly better, but man do I miss having a stick shift.
And when I do drive an automatic, I end up driving it like a manual anyway. I can't resist downshifting when slowing down.
Niche brands like Porsche which do more custom orders are a little different.
I'm only willing to drive a manual. It's getting harder to find them in new cars. Some companies can build them, or still release a few.
(Toyota said my car's model had 5% in Manual transmissions)
If I have to, I'll buy exclusively used cars to stick to a manual transmission.
In my view, what will ultimately change the game is fully electric cars. From my experience, the broader torque curve makes a big difference.
The problem these days is even the factory won't make MT in all configurations, and often stick is restricted to only the lower tier engine and/or trim levels.
If you have 1 car 3 trims and 5 colours each, that's already 15 combinations before you get to engines, optional extras etc, etc, etc.
Or are you just referring to models to test drive?
I will say, I feel when I was driving cars with a manual transmission that I was much more aware of road conditions / anticipating needed shifts.
The problem with articles like these are that they start from the presumption that self driving cars need to be perfect. They don't; they just have to be better than humans... and that's a pretty low bar.
The middle ground of "driver assist" might be more dangerous, but the end goal of "no driver at all" will ultimately be much safer. Even if it still results in the occasional death, that's still going to be better than humans.
Before the flint, people were far less prone to create wildfires. Before the wheel, no one ever killed another person by shoving a bagel down their throat. Before the printing press, well..
Worse fuel mileage for the majority, and more cognitive load that doesn't guarantee people don't do stupid stuff. Wishful fluffy think-piece IMO.
Hello from the UK.
Manual cars certainly do make using a phone difficult.
I'm not quite sure you want that. ;)
When I learned how to drive it was auto only, and In the US, trying to switch from auto to stick is a classic catch-22 if you don't have really good friends. However if you can somehow get yourself bootstrapped (YouTube videos, racing sims, plus maybe an hour or two with a friend) to the point where you can practice yourself in an empty parking lot you should be good to go.
This seems to be making a good case against your point.
Despite what you say here, motorcycles are horribly dangerous compared to a car. Having a good mental model is just not that relevant to safety. Often we specifically make things safe by not leaving a human fully and completely in charge, because humans are imperfect and make mistakes.
> With a car or in the 737 Max case, the user is unable to develop a mental model of the machine, thus making correct and safe operation difficult.
Planes are extremely safe. People fearing planes because they don't control them is even a known phobia.
Well, to some extent motorcycles are very dangerous because the people who ride them tend to be risk takers and not too bright. For instance, you often see people on motorcycles riding very close to other vehicles, because the power to weight ratio gives you a feeling of maneuverability and speed compared to cars and therefore people assume they can anticipate and avoid cars. Banking into a turn makes you feel like you can go faster than a car. But motorcycles are less able to corner and brake than cars at the limit, so a rational person would leave as much or more space. Another point is that there's no reason to think that people on motorcycles use alcohol and drugs at the same rate as people in cars. But riding a motorcycle doesn't in itself make you ride impaired.
In other words, I think you (like an awful lot of people do) are ignoring the fundamental nature of statistics, that they are based on a certain context where you know some things and don't know others. When the context is not appropriate, the numbers are not valid.
I knew a person who was a careful type, always wanted a motorcycle, took classes, rode carefully, had full protective gear, etc. And he did it for a while but driving in traffic he realized that very little protected him from death. He discontinued eventually.
Generally, "but I'm special, I'm different" is not a great assumption for safety. The average car driver is not great, either, but they're still not dying in the same amounts.
Reminds me of how certain people at work write things in cursive, making it an indecipherable secret code as far as our millennial boss is concerned.
Automatic cars do get better mileage, and AFAIK the concept of “manual” makes no sense in a future where we switch to electric cars to reduce Co2 emissions.
The article author’s point about using additional limbs making it harder to text and drive is well taken, but I think we are going to have to continue to work on ways to make texting while driving either safe or impossible in an electric/automatic future.
The reason is not what some might think. Once, a manual transmission was considered an economy feature. Cars with manual transmissions had a final drive ratio tuned for fuel economy.
Today, a manual transmission is considered a sporty feature. Cars with manual transmissions today are often tuned for performance, not economy. This can be seen in both the gear ratios of the transmission and how the engine is tuned. The result is a car that is zippier to drive, but less efficient.
It is very difficult for a human to keep the engine within such a narrow RPM band for efficiency, without accidentally lugging or stalling. So, they will likely spend their time with higher RPMs which miss these opportunities.
That point is nonsense. Changing gear is almost completely automatic and takes very little time. Also completely inapplicable on motorways where you're basically always in 5th .