I recommend stick shifts to everyone. It should take all four limbs to drive a car.
When "driving a car" means turning a key and then pointing it in the right direction, it's no surprise the experience has lost its luster. If your life is about constantly being online, then I see the article's point—public transit is your best option. If you enjoy driving, then get a car that's fun to drive.
Unfortunately the appeal of manuals is lost on most Americans.
For me, the luster is lost because driving is typically high stress. Having to drive a manual would only increase the number of things I need to concern myself with and make it more stressful. I realize I'm probably in the minority. Particularly because about the only place I don't mind driving is on the highway, probably because I usually just cruise in one lane without having to make many decisions except when I need to exit or the occasional lane change.
No, you're not in the minority. I think the majority of Americans don't actually like driving. They might see the car as a status symbol, or as freedom or as necessary. They might prefer to be a driver than a passenger due to issues of power, control or trust but few actually get much out of the act of driving.
I love driving a good sports car with a manual transmission. I'm the minority, not you.
I long for the day when I can leave my somewhat sporty car in the garage and only take it out when I intend to have a blast driving, and use public transit, bicycles, and my feet for everything else. When I drive, my primary focus is on "not dying". Driving near Detroit every day, this is actually pretty hard. Can't wait to move to a city where car ownership isn't necessary.,
Stick sucks in stop-and-go traffic. I wouldn't say it's impractical for commute drives (I drove a stick in a daily commute from SF to Santa Clara for a year and a half), but it's not particularly pleasant.
I've found that a manual forces you to pay more attention to the task of driving. I wasn't the most responsible and focused driver before, because automatics make it easy to be distracted. When someone gets in the car with you, you have a moral and ethical responsibility to /protect their life/, which is in your hands. That's about the best argument I can make in favour of manuals.
If I end up having kids, they won't have their own cars until they are proficient with a stick.
I'm 17, and drive a manual. My parents thought I was crazy when I said I wanted to only drive manual, and I've noticed that at my school my vehicle is one of probably 5 cars (out of >100) in our lot that's a stick. When I ask friends why they don't drive stick, they say they simply don't want to deal with the hassle of it. Enthusiasts are few and far between…
Less than 10% of cars in America are stick shift now[0]. I've also read studies that claim they are less than 5%.
I took my car to Grease Monkey to get the oil changed and I had to drive it into and out of the bay, because no worker there knew how to drive a stick.
It also very much saddens me that when it's time to get a new car, I may be forced to not get a stick because so many models simply don't come in a manual now.
That's no longer necessarily the case, especially for highway driving. Modern automatic transmissions are often more fuel efficient than the standard transmission option on the same car.
A stick is also only more fuel efficient if you're always in the right gear. It's much more natural to drive aggressively when driving a stick, so I suspect that many drivers negate any fuel efficiency savings.
I tried to learn to drive on a manual transmission. My mom has always driven manual so it made sense since that was the car available to me at the time. I hated it though. I'm sure it's fun if you're already a driver, but after years and years of riding my bicycle and becoming accustomed to dealing with traffic, pedestrians, etc at the speed of a bicycle, driving was a huge mental shift for me. The fact that I also had to worry about the transmission and that the car would violently let me know that I was doing it wrong turned it into a nightmare. Driving an automatic meant that I could focus completely on the road and not killing myself or anyone else.
An interesting analogy that I thought of at the time was manual memory management. Stalling the car felt an awful lot like throwing a seg fault. I haven't followed the analogy very far so it might break down, but it's certainly true that in the right hands (race car drivers, kernel programmers?), C and stick shifts can be wielded with devastating effect.
I never actually finished learning to drive though, as I live in NYC now, so YMMV (literally).
In Europe (or at least in Belgium) driving on a manual transmission is default, automatic is rare. When you learn to drive with automatic and pass the exam, you are not even allowed to drive manual.
It is something you pick up after a couple of hours of driving and becomes second nature.
That said, I would prefer automatic, especially in traffic jams. Unfortunately it is not always an option when driving a company car.
I don't get the appeal of a stick shift. I've had one for four years and, if I could, I would go back and get an automatic instead.
To me, a stick shift doesn't give a feeling of control. It gives a feeling of subservience. I have to do more busy work to accomplish the same tasks. I must appease the car gods by choosing the appropriate gears and releasing the clutch properly, lest they stall me.
As an analogy, I would not code in assembly unless I needed its performance or flexibility. But some people, such as one of the hosts of 'Security Now!', like to do everything in assembly.
When "driving a car" means turning a key and then pointing it in the right direction, it's no surprise the experience has lost its luster. If your life is about constantly being online, then I see the article's point—public transit is your best option. If you enjoy driving, then get a car that's fun to drive.
Unfortunately the appeal of manuals is lost on most Americans.