I recently learned that in the past decade the number of stick shift cars in the U.S. has dropped by nearly 25%. With the advent of electric cars, I assume most cars won’t even have a gear box in the future.
In England, cars with manual transmission have always been far more common than automatics. When we first moved here, people always joked about us driving on the wrong side of the road but for me the issue wasn’t where on the road to drive but how.
I have vivid memories of my dad teaching me to drive in our living room when I was 17. I realize this may sound strange, but he was a very cautious man who was as terrified of me getting behind the wheel as I was with my daughter some 30 years later.
I sat on a dining room chair with three cans of baked beans on the floor in front of me. The one on the left was the clutch, the center was the brake and the right was the accelerator.
The clutch was the one to press with your foot before changing gears and the brake was the one my father prayed I would keep my foot hovering over at all times “just in case.” The accelerator, which is powered by “petrol” or sometimes diesel, is what makes the car go because gas is the invisible matter that’s used to fuel Victorian lampposts or central heating.
After several indoor lessons, my father could put off the dreaded moment no longer. It was time to get out of the house and into his car. Looking back on in it, driving a stick shift is actually far more difficult than an automatic so I was grateful to progress to something easier when I moved over here.
I learned phrases that I would never have heard otherwise. “You’re stuck in first gear, now move up to third, fourth, fourth, no third, second, first. Brake, brake!” That kind of thing. But that wasn’t the worst of it.
I don’t know if you’ve heard of these here in the Midwest, but in England we have a lot of huge mounds commonly known as hills. It doesn’t matter if you live in rural areas or cities, there’s no getting away from them. So one of the things I had to accomplish before passing my driving test was the dreaded “hill start.”
All these years later I still shudder at the thought. What you had to do was drive up a hill and when it was safe, pull to a stop. Then you had to start the car up again with the tricky maneuver of letting down the hand brake with your right hand while gradually taking your right foot off the brake. One misstep would cause the car to stall. Two missteps and you’d find yourself gradually rolling back down the hill. It was terrifying.
Aside from the act of physically having to change gears, there are also rules about which ones to use when. Apart from the obvious one of starting off in first gear, you also have to use first when going downhill. It’s much more complicated for a young driver or an old one who deliberately hasn’t driven in her hometown for the past 15 years.
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Sadly, one thing we do have on English roads that you also have here is ice. Although our winters are far less severe, icing isn’t only something to be seen on “The Great British Baking Show.” The main problem is we are pretty inefficient at clearing snow or salting roads because it’s simply not something we often have to do.
I’m told you have far more control of your vehicle in slippery conditions if you drive a stick shift. But the reality is when you’re skidding into trouble there’s precious little you can do about it in any gear. The good thing is I’ve only experienced this once. The bad thing is I slid into one car causing a domino effect with the two in front of it.
My husband Grumpy is the sort of driver who can hop into any car and simply drive off without even thinking about it. Automatic, stick shift, both sides of the Atlantic, not a problem. He’d be a great car thief if he ever chooses to try that particular career path.
I, on the other hand, must have every inch of a new car explained in person, with a handbook and a handful of YouTube videos. I was so nervous to drive here that I actually took a couple of lessons when we arrived, picking up the odd distinction of being the oldest person my instructor ever taught.
By the time I got to take my American driving test, I was super confident for two reasons. 1. I’d spent a year driving around on my British license and 2. I discovered the test itself was so easy a kindergartner could probably pass. I sailed through both the written exam and a stop sign on Gartner Road, yet still passed because by then, for me, it was all automatic.
Hilary Decent is a freelance journalist who moved from England to Naperville in 2007.