Things I’ve noticed about these American drivers
Americans drive on the wrong side of the road! This makes it extremely confusing and dangerous for normal people to cross the road – Darwinism in reverse.
And everyone here drives automatics. Where I come from, automatics are for girls who can’t get their head around how a stick works. You can’t pop a decent wheelie in an automatic or drive a sports car properly. I guess sticks are for expert drivers, expert drivers like me who remember to pull up the handbrake for Nathan when he parks on a slope… and not like how he drives off with the handbrake still on, or how he continually reminds me who has the license when I give him expert driving advice.
fly*
Not to mention we build our houses out of brick and stone…
A wooden house is not a mans house unless its built in the woods and with your hands…
Peabody
In South African we’ve got something called a “gear lever”. And we drive cars, not sticks. Bizarre, init?
As for driving on the left hand side of the road, this means, when driving a manual car as a right handed person, that even when your hand is on the gear lever, your dominant hand is still on the steering wheel – making the world a safer place!
You okes over there can keep your little houses on the priaries, George W, wrong sided roads and people that drive sticks. We’re doing just fine over here…
niqkita
I’ve been happily driving stick shifts for 17 of the 20 some years I’ve been driving, have chosen them over automatics when getting a newer car, but my mechanic recently advised me to get an automatic next time, he says less goes wrong with them ~:)
stobby bones
i will agree with Nathan, yes driving a stick is quite fun, especially when you run it up and dump it. it’s also annoying when you are in a city.
oh and monk, what do you know about running it up and dumping it?
pfffttt! Egon, come on now, it’s a stick shift not a stick drive. we are not fighting state puff marshmallow man any more.
you know what i say, three on the tree is the life for me.
Cait
I learned to drive in a stick shift. I can drive them, I just don’t want to in city traffic. Since most people are right handed, the left side stick shift that would be the case with autos designed to drive on the left side of the road – must be tough. I guess I could do it with practice, but I suspect there’d be a lot of hair-raising grinding before I got proficient.
Eon
The left side is the right side, the right side is the wrong side! 😉
I got rid of my stick drive – too much hassle in traffic. When I was in Belgium it freaked me out to watch the driver and the road – it felt like he was turning up the wrong side of the road the whole time. I was just waiting for the big bang to happen.
fly*
hehehehe….and they have the gear shift next to the steering wheel….whats that all about… ?”! :oD
Jam
mmmmmm…..
funny ’cause my partner never appreciates my “driving advice” either. Oh well.
Fuschia Faery
Play nice children!
nathan
Hah….oh man…well, you asked for it…
1.) America invented driving (along with harnessing electricity, modern music, and the Internet) and therefore the side that we drive on is the correct side (incidentally, Americans drive on the right-hand side of the road, which would make it even more “right”). Moreso, it has come to my attention that only the English and their colonies (ie South Africa, Australia, etc) drive on the left. The common Englishmen and his foreign counterparts have been so oppressed and strangled by the dogma of their own totalitarian society for the past several hundred years that I’m not surprised that they wake up backwards every day…
3.) Automatics…well yeah, driving a stick is much more fun, but not when you have to do it every day. You see, here in America we have big wide open spaces where the buffalo are free to roam and my Indian ancestry can look far and wide…so we do a lot of driving. And when you do a lot of driving, you don’t want to be constantly shifting your stick. Convenience is another gift we gave to the world. In fact, it’s the major contribution of the US to everyone else. Also, the fact that we’re all spread out prevents us, like some countries, from indefinite inbreeding.
9568793.) Hand brakes are for sissies. The END.