Look at this amateur with power steering, automatic choke, and an electric starter.

If you’ve never used a hand crank to turn the engine over, you’ve never really started a car.

If you don’t push your vehicle with your own physical strength, you can only suggest/“point” a car

Oh, we’re gatekeeping driving?

If you can't shift gears faster than 120ms you're inferior to the automatic already.

You think f1 drivers are fucking around with a clutch? Get off your horse and realize everyone and their half siblings have moved on.

This is from a crusty guy who taught many a fine lady how to drive the ol stick shift. That was such a great pickup line.

Driving has to involve a clutch? I'm very confused by this. Manual driver btw.

I'm about as big a car enthusiast as a person can be. I've built everything, rock crawlers, drag cars, drift cars, and road race cars. I've had lowriders and lifted trucks. I've owned automatics, 4, 5, and 6 speed manuals, 3-speed column shift manuals, cvts, an electric car, and a push button shifted Chrysler imperial. I've driven cars, heavy machinery, boats, planes, and even a hovercraft one time.

While I love my manual cars, to say a person can't drive until they learn to operate a manual is one of the dumbest opinions I've ever heard.

If your car is not drawn by animals, you are not driving it. You might be piloting or controlling it, but not driving it.

This is kind of, by-definition, wrong, not just unpopular.

For the simple reason that even though I only tried to learn manual once, I can drive any electric car without issue.

Hell even before that, some people could drive trucks or buses or motorcycles, but not all people with driver's licenses could.

If we came up with a different word for driving other types of cars, then it would make sense. But we didn't, so driving just refers to the broad concept of operating various types of motor vehicles, usually at relatively high speed, but not exclusively.

And that's quite frankly because even without manually operating a clutch, driving is still a huge skillset that most people struggle to excel at.

Pfft, amateur.

If you can't manually adjust ignition timing and air:fuel ratios you can't really drive a car.

Not an unpopular opinion, just gatekeeping.

If you've only ever operated fuel-injected vehicles then you don't really know how to start a car

I haven't driven the newest vehicles, but you can have control over an automatic and where it shifts. And I'm not even talking about the shifting selector, but how you give it gas at certain points to trigger the shifting pattern. Do many people drive like that, probably not, but it's not the machine that determines the driver.

You kids and your horseless carriages

I’ve driven both extensively and you know what? I’m down for an automatic transmission and turbo in city traffic. I’ll reconsider a manual if I move out to the sticks again.

Just for kicks I'll throw in my unpopular opinion: "If you have to use 1st gear then you don't know how to drive manual"

Your view is outdated, and will increasingly become entirely irrelevant as electric and hybrid vehicles continue to vastly outpace ICE production, if only because it entirely eliminates this silly elitism.

I daily a manual and this is a braindead take

Where is this unpopular, America? That's just a fact.

Ill upvote since the amish feel if you don't use a harness you are just letting a machine drive.

Call me the car whisperer, then! 😅

Up voted because it's definitely against my opinion.

I can drive manual, have done for over twenty years. I now own an EV which doesn't have "gears". It's just a single clean line from standstill to top speed, no shifting necessary, manual nor automatic. Just press the gas and it goes.

I'm still driving. And I know how to drive manual, as I mentioned.

I'm just using other means now:

• press pedal to go forward
• release pedal to go slower/brake (*)
• press buttons to (de)activate cruise control (CC)
• press buttons to adjust CC speed
• press buttons to adjust CC front car distance
• keep track of CC deactivating if at a standstill for too long
• keep track of CC not being able to activate until over 16 km/h
• remember that using brake pedal deactivates CC so it needs to reactivate or you need to take control of the throttle manually
• button to reactivate CC at old speed rather than setting new speed
• button to activate CC at new speed rather than old speed after deactivation, if desired
• button to switch between CC lane keeping assist and manual steering

(*): this is actually harder and requires more feeling and control, because you're not really brute-force braking as with the brake pedal — it's more akin to motor braking with a combustion engine. That's the feeling. So you have to know the timing to release the pedal, and how far to release it for braking as smooth as possible. And the muscle memory of "okay motor braking isn't enough here, gotta use the actual brake pedal". And this happens very rarely so it requires more cognitive overhead with these cars.

So it's actually a lot more shit to worry about and understand than in my previous, manual shift car.

Shifting is just a product of the engine. This new engine doesn't need it, so I'm not driving now?

Bullshit. 😉

Manual transmission is the norm outside of the US

top quality shitpost here.

If you think shifting gears is an important part of driving you are, most likely, a shitty driver. I put as much attention on the stick as I put on my pinky toe when I'm walking, I do use it but my attention is in not tripping with any obstacle, not bumping into someone, not stepping on a dog shit... I barely notice what I do with them unless something's wrong, the toe's hurting or the transmission acting up.

Driving manual isn't that special, over here in Europe everybody do it, literal children, grandmas over a hundred years old, people with mental disabilities...

I think that manual transmissions still have some advantages in some cases, but I have an automatic since half a year ago (my only prior experience was one week in the States with a rented car) and I prefer it, the same car in manual was also available and it was cheaper. Zero regrets. After a hard day of work, not having to do leg series with the clutch in the traffic jams is just objectively better.

Actual operation of the vehicle is about 10% of the skills you need to be a good driver. Source: am former driving instructor that taught manual.