> making it difficult to use a cellphone or eat while driving

Desperate lack of imagination there. People do all of the following:

- shove cellphone between ear and shoulder

- temporarily hold food in teeth

- change gear with food hand

- drive with gear hand, jam wheel with knees for the second it takes to change gear

- drive for long periods in the wrong gear; you can do almost all your urban driving in third or second.

Surprising things are possible with partially failed manual transmissions. My wife drove back from the Scottish highlands in a car where the shift was almost totally seized - took both hands to wedge it into third, and left in there. I've driven a car with an ECU failure that meant it stalled if asked to idle, so every downshift required a rolling restart and it was extremely inconvenient to stop at junctions - I had to plan ahead and roll through slowly.

Necessity is indeed the mother of invention. I once rode shotgun with a friend on a car trip where we both had food in our right hands. Whenever he said “shift” I’d move the gear knob.

I learned how to use manual transmission when I was 11 years old. We lived out in the country, 35km from the nearest hospital and my Mum burned her hand quite severely late one night. We drove to the hospital with me shifting to whatever number Mum called out, while she kept the burned hand in a bucket of iced water.

In hindsight I don't know why we didn't just call an ambulance.

  In hindsight I don't know why we didn't just call an ambulance

Presumably, any ambulance would be starting from the hospital, meaning a 70km round trip taking up to twice as long.

Given that you said km instead of miles, I don’t either.

> And I suspect that in practice that the fuel economy advantages of stick shift were erased by the "fun to drive" aspect.

Not always. Hypermiling is a fun pastime that I enjoyed while I drove stick. And it kept me engaged in the act of driving. It’s almost like treating each stretch of roadway like a golf course: how can I get from A to B with the least amount of energy used given the lay of the land, speed limits, traffic signals, and the behavior of other road users?

My first car was a 4-speed stick-shift Fiero, and I remember an automotive tech telling me to ignore their shifting recommendations because “then you’d be doing 35 in 4th gear.” Even at 16 I thought, “well if that’s more efficient, why wouldn’t I do it?” I can accept that I have weird metrics for “fun to drive” though.

> where the driver chose shift points for economy rather than for power and acceleration

I do this every time the fuel light comes on!

My manual sports car gets 28mpg using economy shift points and 22mpg using sport shift points (5 and 2 years data).

In France shift stick are generally cheaper than automatic gear

Same in US. The transmission in my little car was a line item on the price... automatic was US $600 more.

But the car companies barely even make money on small cars, and this particular product line (Toyota Scion) was discontinued.

If the market shrinks to the point where something is a specialty item, then the price difference can invert itself, which is what I think happened in the US.

It's still the case here, but for some models it's not an option.

Most models these days have no manual option in the US. And when it is an option it’s usually force-paired with the baseline trim or incompatible with a number of feature packages.

I read a study several years ago on a similar topic about attention and safety citing higher engagement/less distraction with manual transmissions. However, it also found that while manuals increased safety for younger drivers by forcing them to be fully engaged, it _decreased_ safety in older drivers due to the added complexity it introduced. So while the effect may be real, it is nuanced.

agreed on all points

stick shift won't deter people from doing whatever, I sadly admit that at time I lose focus by trying to manipulate my cellphone when in GPS mode

I agree that stick-shift on its own is not a safety improvement; like you, when I get in a manual car, I shift instinctively. A neatly conditioned response. I switch back and forth between my two cars, one auto, one manual, without messing up shifts in either. The only thing that gets me is my clutch control is a bit flaky for a few days after switching (I run the cars in 6-month intervals).

What I find does help is that my Supra does not have automatic-anything, apart from cruise control. Everything is manual. If I want the car to do something, I have to explicitly set a control to do it. In the process, I'm generally constantly aware of the state of the car, from the lights to the heater. Granted, I did fit parking sensors, but I conditioned myself to never rely on them 100% - shifting into Reverse, I always turn around and watch out the rear window. Even factory-fitted sensors may miss bollards or posts. I have no reversing camera, so I'm acutely aware of the width and length of the Supra when manoeuvring in tight spaces.

I am in agreement that the various electronic driver aids that are sold as safety options are dangerous in the long-term, however. Many cars have automatic braking systems. Not only is this potentially unreliable under certain circumstances, but overconfidence in the system can lead to exactly what the author suggests - the driver's brain shunts authority for panic-braking to the automatic system, without the driver being consciously aware of it, and looks to the next thing on the priority list. Human brains are phenomenally good at outsourcing things. The more we automate, the more we wind up withdrawing attention. Overconfidence in Tesla's Autopilot system is at least partly responsible for the deaths so far (now, I'm not blaming the drivers; they did what anyone could reasonably expect, they shunted responsibility for the car to the computer. No matter how much Tesla disclaim that the driver must supervise the technology and be ready to take control at all times, this isn't going to happen in practise because the shift in priorities happens subconsciously).

There's no clear solution here; the driver aids are set up with the best of intentions, but they may wind up causing more harm than good even to an experienced driver.

And I do choose shift points for economy from time to time :) Sure, sports-shifting is great fun, especially with a performance car, but the only way I can afford to run the car at all is to save fuel where I can, and having full manual control allows me to do that. Roughly 90% of my driving involves shifting before 3k RPM. It's only when joining highways that I let the Supra off the leash :D

You should let me drive you around, then

in the past automatics tended to have fewer gears, making them less efficient by default. but modern autos are now more efficient than even a perfect driver of a manual

Indeed, and as I understand it, there's a mechanism in a modern transmission that disables the torque converter when cruising, further improving efficiency.

Over the course of my life, I've noticed a remarkable improvement in the behavior of automatic transmissions, going from "jerky" to "smooth" for lack of better terms. While overseas last year, I drove a large Mercedes van that even sensed when I was descending a hill, and downshifted the way I would have done it in a stick shift car.

Correct, many modern automatics are “full lockup” like the ZF8.

My 25 year old diesel automatic Toyota Estima people carrier has a lock-up clutch that engages at about 75 kph. It's possible to modify the wiring to engage it at lower speeds, or manually select gears.

Yes, but I find modern automatics to be frustrating in their shift points. I have a 30 year old manual transmission sports car, with probably less than 140 hp, but because of the gearing, driving is pretty much all done between 2500-3000 rpm, and it feels reasonably responsive. I also have a 6 year old SUV, with an automatic that has a lot of gears, and a turbo engine with a lot of power, but it feels underpowered much of the time, because if you are just cruising it will end up at about 1200-1500 rpm and seem as though it is practically lugging the engine. If it was just programmed to stay a little higher, like 2000-2500, it would feel as powerful as it is. There is of course a "sport mode", but it is too aggressive.

Also, modern automatics tend to change their behavior all the time according to mood. There is nothing more counterproductive than an "adaptive" transmission (or other system). The word "adaptive" simply means that it isn't responsive when you do something different. Which is bad.

sure, but there is a tradeoff between performance and fuel efficiency: your sports car crusing along at 3000rpm is sucking fuel to do it. i think being programmed for efficiency is a reasonable default, and sport mode available when you need/want it. of course soon enough any differences in ICE transmissions will be moot..

Except it isn't. You'd think that 30 year old engine technology, combined with double the rpm would use hugely more fuel, but in practice it's not that big of a difference. What has changed is that manufacturers have figured out that nobody makes a buying decision on the nonquantifiable driving characteristics that auto magazines used to describe, and therefore it's a no-brainer to sacrifice them for 1 or 2 mpg more.

And of course, the newer SUV gets much worse mileage anyway. If a couple mpg really matters that much to you, you can always drive less too. The earth doesn't care if you get twice the mileage or drive half as much.

Yes, and automatics are now noticeably faster.

It makes me a little sad, though.

Double manual transmissions with computer controlled (often wet) clutches are the current fastest trans. They don’t have a left pedal, but they’re mechanically more like a manual trans than a traditional automatic.