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Comment by Arch-TK | Hacker News Reader

Even people who know about the solution might find it drops out of their brain in a moment of panic.

I locked myself out of my house recently, and it was only after scaling to the 1st floor, breaking in through an open window, and breaking through a locked interior door (the house had been secured as I was going on a trip, and the only things I forgot were my keys and that window), that I remembered that there was a spare key in my car (which was open). This moment of clarity coincided with the stress going away.

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> Even people who know about the solution might find it drops out of their brain in a moment of panic.

I agree. During a period of huge storms in my region I kept mentally preparing for getting caught in a flood: engage first gear, press the gas and go, slow and steady.

Then my fears materialized and as soon as the flood started pushing my car, I pressed the clutch and engaged the second.

Thankfully I realized it fast enough, kept pressing the gas and engaged back the 1st, so my mental training may have helped, but that was a close call.

Again, it depends a lot on your experience with vehicles. I expect someone who had driven a manual for a long while (or even learned on one but hadn't driven one recently) would be radically more likely to come to "Oh, select neutral" as a solution than someone who has only ever driven automatics. "Neutral" is far more part of "life with a manual" than it is with automatics - I would be willing to bet that a substantial fraction of automatic transmissions have never been deliberately put in neutral.

My daily driver has an archaic manual sequential transmission (2005 Ural - sidecar motorcycle sort of thing), and I select neutral at every stoplight I'm likely to be at for a while to avoid wearing the clutch bearings. Also, I have to most of the way double clutch my shifts on that bike (pause in the false neutral between gears) to avoid too much clashing. If I had a runaway throttle condition (certainly possible), I have at least three instant methods I'd use (kill switch, clutch, and rock it into a false neutral). But I've spent most of my driving career with such things, and vehicles that don't have those are a bit of a novelty to me.

Also my Toyota Auris Hybrid has a weird kind of joystick for changing gear and putting it into neutral position requires holding that position for some time. Gave me an unpleasant (but luckily harmless) event in a car wash where you're required to have power on but use neutral position with automatic gearing.

Random aside, I set my automatic in neutral while setting the parking brake, to let it rock into place

On a manual it's the opposite. Put it in 1st gear, let it settle into place, only then parking brake.

1st will hold the car by itself if the parking brake slips.

That works until it doesn’t. When my poorly adjusted and full of mud parking brake finally failed The weight of my Jeep overcame engine compression and rolled the engine over while it was in first. It got going surprisingly fast until it smacked into a rock wall and flipped the Jeep on its side. This was in remote Uganda.

Video from immediately after it flipped over https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DChDTGIciNI

Shouldn't you put it in reverse on a forward incline, not 1st?

And turn the wheels such that even if it got going it would be stopped by terrain? That should be especially easy on unpaved African roads.

Reverse is troublesome, because if it does roll the engine over it will turn the engine backwards. While that shouldn’t cause damage, it’s still not great. I actually felt it doing so once while sitting in the drivers seat. I could feel it turning over one cylinder at a time , one every 5 seconds or so.

Using the terrain is my preferred option, but then I didn’t have that choice

I don't think there's any particular problem with rotating the engine in reverse while it's off, but on most manual transmissions that I'm aware of, first and reverse ratios are pretty similar, so likely not much to be gained.

> I don't think there's any particular problem with rotating the engine in reverse while it's off

I agree, in theory it should be fine.

Driving a lap around the African continent is not the place to test that theory.

I just looked it up, my Jeep has the NSG 370 6 speed box behind the old 3.8ltr V6.

1st is 4.46

Reverse is 4.06

Would it have helped to put it in second? If this the case. Why don’t we put the car in highest gear instead of first?

No actually, first gear low range 4x4 would be better - and that’s what I do now.

Think of how much effort it takes to pedal a bike from standstill in 1st gear vs the highest gear. The force required is the same if it’s being applied to the wheel and turning your legs (the engine)

You want the car to have the least leverage against the engine, not the most.

Oh I still have the engine running for this. The computer will bitch at me if I turn off the engine and it's not in P

for more braking action shift the demultiplicator into lowest setting, engage the reverse then block all differentials. no parking brake needed.

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