Ask Lemmy

Practice your manual driving in a big open parking lot or something. Somewhere you don't have to worry about rules of the road while still figuring out your muscle memory for shifting. Like everything else, it'll become second nature in time.

When I first started driving I was terrified all the time, but over time fear disappeared. It gets easier with experience.

To make driving more appealing, I suggest living in an unwalkable American Midwest purgatory where there's fuck-all to do but watch tractors circle fields or meth

You will begin to associate the positive emotions of escape and freedom with driving, which will make you enjoy it a lot more

Your mileage may vary, but it worked great for me

"Are cars always this awful" you ask, whilst shitting on the alternative...

You're just learning.

You should always be paying attention, and vigilant. But over time you don't actively think about keeping the car between the lines, you just do it. You don't think about accelerating a bit to maintain speed when a hill starts, you just do it. Etc etc. Same with driving a manual transmission. At first it's all so much. Pat your head and rub your belly. But eventually it becomes a learned skill you don't actively focus on.

No, it's not awful all the time. Cruising down a highway or familiar streets can be kind of zen. I say this as someone who despises car-culture and believes most transit should be mass, public, transit options like buses and trains. But I have fond memories of cruising down the highway at night by myself singing along with my favorite music.

I live somewhere that's walkable and has a subway system now, and it's much better. Don't have to worry about parking, insurance, fuel, drinking too much. So if you really hate driving, you could look into living somewhere that doesn't require it.

You’re right. You should give up driving.

I was very daunted by driving when I started, especially when I had to drive a really old clunky low-power diesel Mercedes with my overly critical dad and big brother yelling at me.

Didn't take long for it to become second nature, and I actually drove taxis for several years.

It literally just takes a while for your brain to get accustomed to everything. Yes, youre right in that a manual can be a distraction from learning traffic, but it really doesn't take long for the shifting to become very natural, and then you can pay attention to the traffic.

As for actual tips on the clutch, it's not really as much a matter of millimeters, as it is about the balance between throttle and clutch. Don't be afraid to give it a bit more gas to makeita sure you won't stop the car even if you let go of the clutch slower. Yes it will sound a bit like a student driver, revving the car "needlessly", but you are a student driver and it isn't needless revving, because you're still learning the feel for the clutch.

It also depend a lot on the make and model of the car the school has. It's a bit of a personal preference, but clutches are really different in different cars. You might really like a 90's Mercedes with a reeaally long clutch, but that too takes getting a bit used to. I remember the cars my car school had were fairly new Ford's, and they had really short clutches. Annoyed me as well.

Honestly took me less than a year of driving and I knew how to shift without a clutch. Some really old 70's sand lorries my dad used to drive didn't have clutches, so he taught me how to (in some cars it works some don't really like it, but basically you could do it in all manual cars, without damaging the gearbox if you do it properly); when accelerating, just as you let go of the throttle, like 0.5sec after that there's a short period where you can just pull the gear to neutral without any resistance. That's easy. Shifting into gear from neutral without clutch isn't as easy, but in some cars, not much of a challenge. You need to rev the engine to match the rpm, but like with a short press of the gas pedal, which revs the rpm higher than it needs to, then when the rpm is coming down there's a window where you can shift into gear really easily.

I ramble, you don't need to thin about that.

I would suggest, if possible (idk if you have a learners permit or smth and can drive under parent supervision), to practice driving on highways and country roads for less traffic to learn the car better. If not, maybe ask your teacher on the next lesson if you could do that.

And if not, if you have to drive in the city, the most important is just to remember that the panic and rudeness you feel isn't something which should make you hurry. People will be annoyed, but you have a right to annoy them, as you're learning. It's a shit thing, being a learning driver, but once you get your licence and get to take the car on a long drive yourself on some chill roads, you might actually enjoy the driving because the stress won't be there. And then learning will become easier as well, when your heart isn't beating through your chest with someone watching over you.

Just keep at it. You know what to do. Now it's just a bit of repetition.

Edit oh and ask anything if you like, 3rd gen taxi driver, drove since 2007 (not driving currently). No stupid questions exist. So anything at all, go ahead.

I don't hear anyone hating on manual cars where I live. They may prefer and pay extra to buy an automatic but they don't hate on manual.

Anyway it's all about practice, manual or not.

Driving manual takes BOTH Theory and Practice.

1. Replay potential scenarios in your head and try to predict how you will react.

2. Re-examine your realtime reactions on the road.

3. Learn both rules of the road and real-life motorists reactions to rules.

4. Safety - Safety - Safety. If it feels unsafe, get off the road safely and wait it out.

Manual driving tips.

Use the emergency-parking-hand-brake for hill-assists.

Practice dual-brake-accelerator press/release.

Practice clutch-release-hold with no brake-accelerator ( fully depressed clutch, quarter-release, half-release, no-clutch .... does the vehicle jump forward, at what point does it start creeping forward, what noise is the engine making, how does the gear-stick/shaft feel smooth or vibrating or extremely-stuck, etc etc )

Practice a reliable gear-stick-shift-shaft action. Turn your wrist outward and push horizontal, and up for 1st-gear. Neutral with a downward wrist and wiggle along the central neutral line. Turn wrist upward and firmly push straight forward for 3rd-gear, and tap gear-knob down and wiggle along central neutral line to confirm gear-stick is in the neutral, etc etc.

So by judging how traffic behaves and by establishing clear personal good gear/manual habits, you can improve your reactions.

Look forward of the vehicle for less than 10 meters ( 30 feet ) and drive below 60 kmph ( 40 mph ) if you can't smoothly handle the manual transmission. Increase by 5 feet look distance as you get more comfortable over several months.

Don't drive in traffic, park if you feel unsafe without causing problems.

Avoid steep shopping mall parking lots and narrow spaces until you are comfortable handling the manual vehicle.

Add wing mirrors and antenna at the edges of the vehicle corners to help visually identify the area around the vehicle.

Best of Luck and Have Fun once you are good at it. If after 2 years you aren't getting any results, then manual may not be the best choice for you and you may need to give it up. Automatic transmissions are now making amazing progress and reliability.

No shame driving automatic transmission vehicles.

I bus to work, it takes only five minutes more than me driving, and is only five dollars a day, and I get to read or listen to podcasts or whatever and not think about traffic or bad drivers. The only downside is obnoxious passengers on occasion and people who smell bad. I don't love driving at all.

Like anything else, the more you practice, the better you get. I remember how much anxiety and stress I had when I was learning; now I don’t even think about it.

Could you get a friend or relative to take you out to a quiet area to get more practice away from traffic and other road users? Then slowly build up to more stressful situations. I was taking my kids a few times a week around the quieter back streets, round and round and round, until they got their confidence up, then we went out to small roads with traffic, and built up until they were driving on busy main roads and freeways.

Here in Australia, you can choose to get an automatic-only license and not have to learn manual. Is that an option where you are?

I remember that feeling. It goes by with experience. I love driving and I'd never buy an automatic as long as there's a manual alternative.

Hard to say without knowing details. How's the traffic in your area, is it a big city or more rural? What country?

It gets better as you gain experience and it becomes like a part of you. In the same way you don think about extending the arm, opening and closing the hand when picking an object, when shifting a gear is the same, you don’t perform all the steps or movements like independent tasks that need all your attention, it just becomes “shift up/down”.

In my first practice lesson I panicked with the all things to take care off, and I didn’t move more than five meters in a speed that the needle detected.

The clutch is not something that goes by precision, is about feelings, with the noise from the motor, the clutch pedal vibrations, the response from the vehicle… I is telling you what to do, in the end is feelings and muscle memory.

Take your time to practice and relax.

It will get much better over time but it always kind of sucks. I highly recommend reorganizing your life to avoid driving as much as possible if you can. The less you do it, the happier you’ll be.

I really hated learning how to drive, because I'm good at learning things in a knowledge type way, but that was little help with learning how to drive. I'm not very good at being not very good at things, which sounds like a humble brag, but it actually means I get frustrated and find it hard to stick with things I don't immediately click with.

It took me a decent while before driving began to feel more natural, but it did get easier; one of the changes I noticed as I improved was I gradually came to treat the mirrors as an extension of my visual perception rather than things I needed to remind myself to check (this also meant I preferred reversing for tight manoeuvres, because the mirrors meant I could better gauge my "vehicular proprioception", so to speak (how close I was to other stuff))

None of this will make your quest any easier, because the process does take time and it sucks for the majority of that. However, I hope you take some comfort in knowing that this certainly isn't a you-problem.

I do think it's a bit crazy that people learn to drive manual cars on the road. It is a lot to manage when you have no experience. Learners should be given a few hours to just mess around on an airfield or car park so they can get a feel for the machine first of all.

IMO most driving sucks anus though, after a year or two and the novelty has worn off. Stressful, expensive, dangerous. I would rather take trains, get stuff delivered and have a day every year or so with a powerful car alone on a racetrack.

I hate driving, it's stressful to be operating heavy machinery with the capacity to kill. That said, driving a manual car is much worse, just adds a lot of stress on top

Yep! In my experience it's awful and it stays awful for ever.

But just like with going to work, over time you come to accept that existence is suffering.

my parents only had manuals and I ended up taking the test a few years later with my friends automatic because they wanted to do a road trip and wanted me to take driving shifts.

Try driving an 18-speed truck transmission without the clutch.

Who's stupid?

You get used to driving, and automatic is probably easier to learn with but afterwards it's not an issue.

I hated learning how to drive, and only really started to tolerate it once I got a new driving teacher. I actually like driving now, mostly because it's one of the few times where I can turn my brain off while not being unfocused.

With that said...I have no idea why Americans (not assuming OP is American, but know it's rare over there) have such an issue with manual cars. My family has both manual and automatic, and I prefer manual because it's much easier to have control. It has never, ever been a distraction for me.