Had an old Rover where you had to lift a collar on the gearstick to select reverse - even although it was a fairly conventional 4 speed with reverse next to second. Seems quite sensible, really.
My 1988 Range Rover did that, although I think it was just a normal accelerator cable. Being an auto gearbox, I'd be sat at a junction with the thing revving away and my foot hard on the brake. People in front thought I was being impatient. Sometimes I'd flick it into neutral to save wearing the torque converter, but then it would rev even higher, and cause a wheelspin when I engaged D.
Doesn't have to be completely autonomous to do that. Plenty modern cars will brake when they detect things in front. Damn annoying if you're trying to run over your neighbour's cat.
Really? I thought it was strongly discouraged as you tend to press both at once in panic. When I drove a go kart which has the pedals literally on opposite sides of it, so I had to use 1 foot for each, I often found I'd forget to release the gas when I braked.
I don't. If you do, you aren't fit to operate a motor vehicle.
Nope, it's due to my brain telling me what I need to know. Where the thing is happening, not to which hand.
In 1980, I drove an Opel in Germany for many months with the same thing. I agree, it was fine and foolproof.
I bought a second-hand Golf once, one of the last with a carburettor and automatic choke rather than fuel injection. After a few weeks, I happened to be driving back along the M25 and it turned into a car-park because of an accident. So I was stopped for a while, then we'd all edge forward a bit, then stop for a while, and so on. After a few minutes of doing this, the slow-running control in the automatic choke packed up, so the engine wouldn't run at less than about 1200 rpm. I got lots of funny looks from cars around me - inevitably it was a hot day so everyone had their windows open, so the sound of my racing engine was clearly audible to everyone. The garage soon fixed that and I never had any more trouble with it.
My next car, the next Mark of Golf, had fly-by-wire for the throttle. But when it failed, it had the opposite effect to making the engine rev uncontrollably: it caused the engine to stall. It only ever happened just as I was pulling out from a junction: I'd get nicely out, across both streams of traffic (assuming I was turning right) and the engine would die. That took the garage a *long* time to fix: it was in the garage on numerous occasions. I remember getting an ecstatic phone call from the garage: we've found out what it is. Cost of part: about 50 pence. Cost of diagnostic labour: several hundred pounds. It was caused by a worn throttle potentiometer. That was one of those cases where it is good to keep all your paperwork. By the time the fault was discovered, the car was just outside its time or distance limit for the manufacturer's warranty. But I was able to produce the first garage bill, with the date and mileage clearly marked, together with the description of the fault. I gather VW head office and the VW garage had a long discussion about who would pay, but how ever it was settled, I got that diagnostic work, together with my earlier bills, refunded because it was covered by the warranty.
Yes - and you got some conversions which could be swapped back to normal easily, so others could drive the car.
I'm surprised both pedals weren't shifted left to keep them in the correct order.
Douglas Bader (who lost both his legs in a flying accident) had the pedals in his cars swapped over, so his left leg which had the extra control of a knee joint, had the precision to control the accelerator and brake, and his right leg which was amputated above the knee and therefore had only thigh muscles to control it, could do the less precise work of working the clutch - though I bet it was difficult to let the clutch in smoothly. That was in the days before automatic transmission, when you still needed two feet (or one foot and a hand control for the clutch) to drive. Apparently the mechanic who delivered the car to him said he could only drive it by crossing his legs. That's mentioned in Paul Brickhill's biography of him.
The first time I drove a go-kart, we were warned that the footbrake is, of necessity, operated with the left foot because you sit astride the steering column. Initially it is hard to brake accurately with the left foot because you develop muscle memory for big movements of a clutch pedal, rather than the right foot which is used to small delicate movement of the footbrake and accelerator (which is why I *always* *always* brake with my right foot in an automatic - I don't trust my left leg to brake gently!). But at least wheel-shredding stops in a go kart are less of a problem. The real problem which we were warned about was driving home afterwards, if we instinctively tried to brake with our left foot after using it to change gear, and got confused as to which pedal needed a heavy touch and which a very light one.
My guess is you'd soon learn either way. I left foot brake on an auto, but have no problems going back to a manual.
Which is why I taught myself to left foot brake in automatics
I can see that this would get your left foot used to more delicate movements, but do you find that when you go back to driving an auto using left foot braking after driving a manual, it takes a while for your left foot to get used to the more delicate touch needed for braking, compared with its previous, temporary use with the clutch?
As with so many things, for some weird reason I find that getting used to the temporary thing (driving someone else's car) is easier than subsequently getting used once again to driving my own car that I am more familiar with.
I haven't driven an automatic for about 10 years now, and the last time was when a garage happened to loan me one while my car was being serviced, so the biggest change is going between my car and my wife's, where the differences are reverse on the opposite side of the gear lever gate (left of first versus right of sixth), and that her car needs as much as two gears lower than mine when accelerating out of a corner or going up a hill, and that if I forget and the engine revs drop too low, it may need an even lower gear than that to get the beast moving again ;-) Given that her car and mine both have 1.6 turbo-diesel engines, but hers is a lot more powerful (I think 100 versus 250 bhp), I wonder if the extra power in hers is due to more turbo boost, and her turbo is running out of puff if I approach in a high gear (low engine revs so little exhaust causing little turbo boost) and then call for more power by dumping more fuel than the air can burn. My wife is forever reminding me "Hetty [the Honda] needs a lower gear than Pug [the Peugeot]".
As with anything, you adjust to the capabilities of what you've got. I probably *should* change down an extra gear in my car too, but if my car still accelerates away in third, why have the extra hassle of trying to change smoothly into second with greater change of engine speed? In other words - laziness!
Oh there is a third thing - really trivial. On my car the wiper stalk is moved downwards from off to intermittent to slow to fast (with flick-wipe in the opposite direction) whereas on her car it's the other way up - grr!
Not really. since I drive autos nearly all the time now. And like driving abroad, it is just a matter of 'switching patterns;
The thing that is messing with my head is that the buttons on the remote locking and the cruise control are reversed from what I expect...
In the UK, I've never seen a car like that, and I've owned about 15, and driven twice as many belonging to other people. 1st and reverse are always next to each other, R being left of 1. I'm not sure of the point of having it set up in the way you describe:
Point 1) It takes longer to shift between 1 and R when doing tight maneuvers. Point 2) If you do f*ck it up, you're changing to R while travelling at high speed.
My wife's Honda CRV 2015 model is like that.
I drove a truck with an overdrive transmission for a while. Ignoring the splitter that made it a 9 speed the pattern was
1 4 2 3The 2 to 3 shift was a pain in the ass. In moments of confusion going from 2 to 4 seldom worked. In a big diesel rig you only have about a 700 rpm useful range from 1100 to 1800 or so.
Yeah but did you ever drive a push button AT when Mopar was on that kick?
I did. 1964 Dodge Polara with a 318 2-bbl and pushbutton auto. Rocking it between R and D to get unstuck was as easy as it gets.
The oddest one I?ve driven was my parents first Renault 4 with a three speed box. Reverse was left and forward, first was left and back. To go from first to second required a dog-leg move though the gate (like second to third, fourth to fifth etc in most cars). The lever was spring loaded towards the second/third plane.
R 2
1 3Tim
Same as my column shift CA Mk II
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