You must not actually drive stick then. The only time I can see myself being able to text while driving stick is on the highway and even then I wouldn’t really be comfortable doing so.

When I used to drive auto I could literally have my phone in my right hand with my left hand on the wheel at all times if I wanted to...

Driven stick my whole life. Maybe it's just that I have large hands, but I don't need to put stuff down while shifting.

The hard part of texting while driving stick is taking your eyes off the road, not having three things to manipulate with only two hands. That's like saying it's impossible for humans to drive stick because there are three pedals but only two feet.

What's your driving style like? I imagine the people who accelerate as quickly as their car is capable of, consistently drive 15-20 over the speed limit, often have to speed up and slow down and dodge between lanes will have to shift a lot more than the rest of us.

It just strikes me as weird that other people think it's impossible to drive stick and text at the same time. Sure you can't do it safely, but that's nothing to do with the transmission.

There are plenty of countries where the majority of cars are manual transmission and trust me, there's still plenty of people texting whilst driving.

The US is predominately automatic, but outside of N. America most of the world still uses manual.

I learned stick on a working holiday, driving utes in Western Australia

>you must not actually drive stick then. The only time I can see myself being able to text while driving stick is on the highway and even then I wouldn’t really be comfortable doing so.

He probably just drives something made in the last ~15yr. In a modern vehicle the power band is wide enough that you have about 3 gears that can be used in any given situation and the gear shift is basically a 6-way toggle switch. You could definitely use your phone if you wanted to.

I used to eat a bagel on my way to work in stop and go traffic with my gear shift hand and that's in a 25yo vehicle with a really long shifter and such little power you really only have one good gear for a given situation. In a vehicle like that it is much harder to be distracted and drive comfortably.

Just leave the clutch pedal down all the time. Proven method

And then you get the added bonus of constantly having to replace your throw-out bearing /s

> You can be texting and driving stick at the same time easily.

I've driven stick shift for over a decade and this is completely false.

> You don’t constantly need your hand on the shifter.

Constantly? No. Frequently? Yes.

You don't need your hand on the phone constantly to text, so I don't see why you couldn't both shift and text.

My first car didn't have cup holders, and I remember managing to drive while holding a cup of soda or a shake when bring food back from fast food drive-throughs, holding the cup the entire trip. It was stick and I had no problem doing this.

With a phone, I'd expect you could just set it down between messages, which should make it easier than carrying those cups was. Setting those down risked spilling them.

It's very difficult to text and drive, driving stick you require far, far more attention to speed/gear/etc at all times. When I drive a stick car I can't doze off, I can't really go on mental autopilot like when I drive an automatic car. This is coming from someone who drove stick for 10 years, now driving an automatic vehicle. - Personal Anecdote.

You're correct, but if you don't want to be that guy you generally want to notice the light is about to change and get into 1st gear. Vs head down facebooking waiting for the honk to step on the gas.

I dunno I'd prefer to be regularly slightly inconvenienced to having some person on their phone slam into me while they run a red.