Slushbox advice
If you drive a slushbox (nee an automatic transmission), please do not creep up a hill; it really sucks for those of us who drive real transmissions. Just simply press the small skinny pedal on the right until you are a proper distance from the car in front of you, then press the pedal on your left—or in the middle on a proper car—until your forward motion stops.
That is all.
This entry was posted at 9:24 am on 16 September 2005 and is filed under Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the post-specific RSS 2.0 feed.
“then press the peddle on your right—or in the middle on a proper car”
first off, if I press the peddle in my car, I don’t know what will happen. perhaps my passenger will give in and buy whatever it is I’m selling?
secondly, if I press the pedal in the middle of my car[’s pedals], I will come to a stop. probably not a great idea while climbing a hill, or most other times of driving with people behind me.
Bah! You say potato, I say potatoe, only one of us is Dan Quayle.
Seriously, how odd that I flipped it once, but not both times. Obviously the brain is a mysterious thing. Intelligent Design, don’tcha know.
As for “saving gas,” driving style has more to do with it than the transmission in the current time, though it used to be a bigger deal. Driving up hill in stop-and-go traffic is not going to be particularly good for MPG either way.
These people were the ones just kinda idleing up the hill, creeping slowly, using the behavior of their torque converter to deal with it. I wasn’t saying they should race up to the next car, simply drive normally, instead of creeping slowly while trying to read the morning paper.
really, i think you’re giving them too much credit. torque converter? how many people driving their cars care enough to know about that?
perhaps their engine is not terribly powerful and/or the hill is quite steep, and they just can’t go up there all that much faster? we don’t all have zoom-zoom fast cars.
What Randy said.
Put the slide rule down. Ditch the typewriter. And for God’s sake, get a modern transmission.
If you’re not a trucker or racecar driver, and you insist on driving a stick shift, it’s you who needs to accomodate the rest of the world, not the other way around.
if you’re gonna drive a stick, you should know your car well enough to be able to drive it sloooooowly up a hill. and if you don’t know your car that well, you probably shouldn’t be driving it.
Ah, yes, because creeping up Arizona Avenue at 1MPH is easy in a manual without abusing the clutch.
It’s not a matter of slide rules, it’s a matter of people paying attention, and just simply putting their car in place behind a red light and not stopping 100 feet back and then slowly creeping forward between sips of their coffee and the morning paper, eventually managing to stop 10 feet past the actual line.
so why don’t you just stop and wait until they’re far enough up the hill so that you can follow at a comfortable speed?
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If you insist on driving an archaic stick operated drive mechanism, please do not fault the rest of the world for saving gas by slowly accelerating, and coasting to stops.