Ask The Best And Brightest: Mandatory Manual Training?
With the autoblogosphere abuzz over Peter Cheney’s “unintended acceleration event,” Jill McIntosh has made a fascinating connection between one auto-journo’s son’s voyage of manual transmission discovery, and a former Ontario Attorney General’s killing of a cyclist back in September. Linking to a Toronto Star report on the trial of Michael Bryant, who killed cyclist Darcy Allan Shephard, McIntosh notes a strange similarity between that fatal incident and Cheney Junior’s garage door tango:
According to a statement read in court, reprinted in the Toronto Star today: Bryant hits the brakes. His vehicle stalls. Bryant tries to start his car, but it stalls again, lurching forward … Bryant tries to start the car again. He’s concentrating on the Saab’s sensitive clutch with his head down. He succeeds at restarting the engine and the Saab accelerates into Sheppard, who lands on the hood.
Obviously, two incidents do not a crisis make, but this is hardly the only evidence suggesting that manual gear-swapping is fast becoming a lost art. But do we really want to further stigmatize manual transmissions by mandating special licenses for manual-equipped cars, as McIntosh suggests?
Making clutches mandatory would not only prevent these situations, but it would also cut down on distracted driving, and generally make for better drivers… but realistically, we all know that will never happen. So, what about mandating that all driver’s tests be taken on a manual-equipped vehicle? Or, for the contrarians out here, what about banning manuals altogether? Sadly this option almost seems the most likely response, given how little demand there is for new cars with manual transmissions. Or is this just a problem for Canadian drivers?
More by Edward Niedermeyer
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@tedward, curious question from someone who's never driven a DSG: do they creep forward in drive, like tc autos? Also regarding your point about low speed, that's too bad because it seems to me the biggest enthusiast use case for the DSG is that in stop and roll traffic you can choose to let it do the work, and do the work yourself when it's fun. However to reinforce your point if you read the Car and Driver long term test of a Jetta TDI with DSG, they complained about the same thing, this is their description, from http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/car/10q1/2009_volkswagen_jetta_tdi_diesel-long-term_road_test: From a stop, the DSG automatically engages a clutch when the driver toes the throttle. But the engagement is slow enough to allow the engine to rev up, and once the clutch does engage, the car lurches forward. Often the lurches were severe enough to break the traction of the front tires, which then summons the traction control into action, which, in turn, shuts down the power. [...]some of the blame must attach to the lag of the TDI’s 2.0-liter turbo-diesel. At best, it’s an annoyance, but editor-at-large John Phillips did experience the car’s complete refusal to move when the Jetta acted as though it had slipped itself into neutral. “Turning against oncoming traffic, the Jetta refused to move. Full throttle and zero movement; happened twice..."
My driver's ed class included a segment where they let us drive a car with a manual around a huge parking lot and let us figure out the basics on our own. That was a fun part of the course! The problem with manuals is the clutch engagement varies significantly. Put me in an old truck with lots of engine noise and vibration plus boatloads of torque and a forgiving clutch and I'm ready to drive in traffic. Put me in a car with a clutch that engages abruptly and a quiet engine without much low end torque and I'll probably stall the engine. Some manuals require more practice than others.