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Posted on 09/04/2026 2:24:01 PM PDT by Libloather
Are drivers who never learn this skill getting the short end of the stick?
Recent research shows that this once-ubiquitous ability is increasingly becoming a lost art.
Only 18% of Americans know how to use a stick shift — with the number even lower among younger drivers.
In a survey of US drivers, Extreme Terrain found more than a third of Gen Z drivers (35%) never learned to drive stick, compared with just 9% of baby boomers.
Further, driving confidence is waning among younger drivers, with only half of those under 30 believing they could competently drive a manual.
“People in their mid-40s and up are probably the only people left who really grew up with the stick shift; people now don’t know how to drive it unless their parents or grandparents teach them,” driving instructor Andy Nelson, owner of Safe Driver Solutions, told The Post.
To that end, and to Nelson’s point, more than half of manual drivers (56%) surveyed learned to drive a manual from a parent or older relative.
The reason for learning how to drive a stick has evolved over time; only 22% of Gen Z drivers learned out of necessity, compared with 55% of boomers.
“Like most of society, it’s turned toward disposable technology, so rather than fixing the transmission, they just replace it,” he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
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I am classically trained - in the H pattern
I am responsible for teaching all of my grandkids how to drive manual transmissions. Both my vehicles are manual. Taught both our kids how to drive manual also. Wouldnt have it any other way.
In Italy, I could negotiate turns, shift and honk the horn all at the same time/
That’s funny.
Had that happen to me recently. Hotel in the city, valet parking only. Guy looked in, saw the manual shift and said, “I’m the only one that knows how to drive one and if you want your car at 2am. I am not here.” He then pointed out the parking garage where valet parking was.
Millenial / Gen Z anti-theft device.
We still own a 6-speed sports car. I need to fix a shift cable problem. Been busy with other things and waiting for the summer heat to end.
I had one manual car. The problem was I lived in a very hilly city. Real pain.
When manuals were around you could tell the noobs. They always went backwards a little changing gears.
I was doing that underage!
LOL
Ah. The old push and pop trick.
NO!
The empties were returnables! They went from the ice bath in the cooler, to my hand, to the empties case.
My dad had a truck with three in the tree.
I have a CJ7 (still some assembly required) that I tried at one time to find a transmission and transfer case to fit a 304 I got.
The original I6 was blown.
Anyway I haven’t done much of anything with it in a few years. After my ruptured colon and months long recovery, the hospital bills and generally losing desire to turn a wrench, I have tried to sell the project jeep.
No dice.
A northern tool gantry crane comes with it.
Manuals are great until you get stuck in a slow moving stop and go traffic jam. Then you leg can get real tired.
I didn’t give up stick shift until 2000. It got to be too much inching along in the rush hour traffic twice a day in Atlanta. Mr. GG2 still has his 6spd manual Dodge Ram 2500.
OK, that’s funny right there!
Well done! ^5
Lol
“my main problem with auto transmission with park lock is that there is nothing you can do when it goes bad or when the car won’t start.”
If you were really old (or an automobile history autist) you would know that the early automatics had a rear pump as well as a front pump, and you could push start them as well.
8-10 years ago in the south of France, I decided I had become too much like the locals and needed to dial it back, when I folded the passenger side mirror in on the back left corner of a bus I was going around to pass. In my MT rental.
LOL
“Manuals are great until you get stuck in a slow moving stop and go traffic jam. “
that’s what killed them.
There was actually an uptick in manual sales during the peak work from home covid, but has faded.
Good one!
Good one!
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