truemagellen

For two reasons...one:

ONLY A SMALL percentage of the population can drive a stick...hence theft is much much lower...there are many examples but check this recent one out

Manual Transmission Foils Carjacker
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Sep 26, 8:53 PM (ET)

SHAWNEE, Kan. (AP) - A would-be carjacker got away with nothing more than the keys Monday after he apparently was thwarted by the vehicle's manual transmission.

The thief was armed with a shotgun when he ordered a 26-year-old man out of his Chevrolet Camaro in a suburban Kansas City parking lot. The driver complied, but when the robber got into the car he was unable to manage the stick shift.

The robber fled the scene in a four-door car that someone else was driving.

Police are investigating whether the attempted theft is linked to four similar robberies in Johnson County during the past week.

http://apnews.myway.com//article/200...D8CS9GDG0.html

Secondly...and there is no way to really account for this:
MT owners rarely use the cellphone while driving.

jefferrari

wow.... Don't steal a car if you can't drive a stick...
I know someone will have trouble with the reverse... but this... lol...

Tigster

I have to say it is much more difficult to drive on the phone, shift, steer with my knees, read the paper, shave and brush my teeth all at the same time with a stick shift.

truemagellen

Feras

iTrader: (1)

actually a larger percentage of the population than you'd think can drive stick (greater than 30% or something like that) and i for one can talk and shift and i do it often.

truemagellen

doesn't mean u should talk and shift :p I only do it in emergencies and I always use my bluetooth headset

as for larger percentage...that 30% is highly weighted in the above 40 year old category

I'll try to pull up the statistics but from what I remember ages 16-28 there are only 2% who drive stick

of 16-24 it drops to 1% and 16-20 it is .5%

it doesn't help when there is no requirment for it in traffic school
the laws don't address between the two
and every major rental car company doesn't even offer them (besides the ultra luxury lines that are usually offshoot divisions anyway...Ferrari, Lambos, etc.)

Rhawb

I'm capable of driving and shifting at once, but I REALLY don't like doing it. I'll usually try and pull off onto a quiet road or parking lot of I get an important call while I'm driving. If it's unimportant, I just silence it and toss it into the cupholder. I'll either call the person back later or pretend I never got a call in the first place.

As far as the issue of nobody my age (21) knowing how to drive stick, I'm really amazed by how many people don't know how to drive stick and even more amazed by how many people think it's an entirely useless thing to learn.

That being said, I made a point to convince both my roomies to buy sticks when they bought new cars. They initially complained about how much of a hassle it would be in traffic, but now they realize that it's just a myth propogated by lazy people. They're both thanking me for it now :D

truemagellen

did u mean driving, shifting and calling all at once?

Aoshi Shinomori

Hahaha at the guy stealing the wrong car, and that LED sign. That must be an awesome job if you don't have a lot of people to hear from after pulling something like that. I'd get fired day one. :p

ZoomZoomH

iTrader: (1)

they *should* make driving manual transmission a requirement when doing licensing test, not that they will, but they should :o

therm8

Those who actually drive stick, and those who know how to drive stick are 2 different things. And there's a reason rental companies don't have them...clutches and manual gearboxes are easy to tear up, and how many people would do so to a rental car. I'd say enough to make it not worth it. Besides who needs a manual rental, really.

It's not as though driving a manual transmission is tough. 30 minutes for most cars and you can get around relatively well, with a week or so to become semi-proficient.

Most people find it unnecessary to have anything other than an automatic. Hence the reason most companies only make a very limited number of manual cars, and the ones they do are performance oriented, very cheap or aimed at the tuner/street racer crowd.

fray

iTrader: (1)

therm8, remember go to europe and you pay extra to rent an Automatic.. if you can find one..

It seems like only in the US are automatic rental cars "standard". (Personally, I'd love to drive a stick in a rental car.. much more fun then the normal automatic econo-boxes I normally get... with the binary gas pedal...)

therm8

I've rented 5 speeds in the UK. Let's just say the clutch always smelled a bit when I returned them :p . And I'm not one to deliberately tear up someone elses propety, but with an unfamiliar clutch and the occasional run for fun, it's inevitable.

It's a different automotive culture over there. Here, people want autos, so that's what the companies give them.

shelleys_man_06

Agreed. Though there is a significant percentage of people who can actually use manual transmissions, it's still pretty much a rarity here stateside. I remember going to the Philippines and there were nothing but manual transmission cars. My guess was that price and terrain were contributing factors.

In the United States, my belief is that people really don't want to deal with the extra work involved in driving a stick, especially during stop and go traffic. I drive 50 miles back and forth to school and during rush hour, it's quite stressful. Don't get me wrong, I love stick shift. It's a lot of fun on the open road, and the 5-3 shift on my 8 always gets rid of those pesky bees. Also, the advent of continuously variable transmissions and new forms of automatics give the option of that manu-matic mode, which IIRC was exclusive only to Porsche.

Anyway, it would be nice to see insurance breaks for us schtick owners. However, I'm afrain we'll never see that since the newer auto-equipped cars' fuel economy ratings are eclipsing that of the latter.

Matt RX8

It is in the UK. I used to live there and since I wanted a license to drive a stick I had to take their 45 minute driving exam in a stick shift car in order to get one. If you take the exam in an automatic, you get a license which is only good for driving an automatic.

They should also give insurance breaks to autocrossers and those that track their cars since they are better drivers than 99.5% of the rest of the people in the USA.

Aoshi Shinomori

I drove my car to warped tour in Randall's Island, man what a mess that was. Took like four hours to go about 60 miles or so, stop-go, stop-go, I would have preferred to be driving an automatic in that situation, other than those predicaments, sticks are the way to go.
Are most standard transmission cars sold, sports cars? I don't know exactly, but to me it seems that a good portion of all sticks sold are sports cars. Also, does anyone know thes percentages of accidents sticks/autos? Those might be big factors when considering insurance breaks. Besides, when are insurance companies known to give out breaks? :p