Why I Drive A Stick (consecutive writing day #20)

I drive a stick shift. I don’t do this for the obvious reason that it makes you look ten times hotter and cooler. Well that may be a part of it. But why I really do it is because it makes the often mundane and tedious task of driving more an activity. Because most of us drive everyday and spend so much time in the car it has lost all traces of novelty, all the stimulation that you typically get when you do such focus- and attention-requiring activity.

Driving a manual brings some of that feeling back. The gas pedal becomes something to be feathered and ceases to be a landing spot for your lead foot, the tachometer becomes a gauge you actually have to know exists (I imagine many people my age have no idea what a tachometer is), and your left foot doesn’t just sit limp and lifeless off to the side. In other words, driving becomes active once again.

Now i’ll concede that once you get used to driving a stick the motions and technique becomes a habit that doesn’t require as intense focus and thought as when you are first learning and driving one. However, even the seasoned manual transmission driver must still be more aware of their car and the road around them. They must determine in real time which gear to move up or down to given their current speed and whether they are accelerating or decelerating, which gear to take a turn with given the speed required, and must have a certain level of finesse and touch to keep from jerking around the passengers too much while accelerating.

Now I may be romanticizing this a bit–but not really. You have to be thoughtful, present, and conscious in a way that we all should be when driving any car, but which we tend to lose when driving automatics. A stick forces you to stay focused on the activity at hand and makes it considerably more difficult to be on your phone, be eating, or be doing anything while driving. Not to say you can’t do these things but it does make you continue to have a bit more of your attention on driving.

Driving a stick has some other advantages as well. First, it makes you more interesting and cooler. It’s a largely dying skill that the vast majority of people in my generation haven’t mastered. It’s a skill that makes you more unique. It also allows you to have better (or worse) gas mileage depending on how you choose to drive. You have control over how quickly you move up through the gears or if you want to skip right from 2 to 4 or 4 to 6 or any other gear. This can make your car considerably more efficient. On top of that you can accelerate quicker and engine brake. Should you ever get a sports or high performance car you’d also be able to avoid the shameful purchase of an automatic (automatic Corvettes are disgraceful).

Basically, you should learn to drive a stick because they are cool, they give you way more control over how you drive and how your car performs, and they keep you way more focused on driving. But most of all, they make driving more interesting, fun, and an activity in its own right.