From Automatic to Manual and Back Again

I learnt to drive in the UK on a manual, stick shift car, and drove manual cars until I was in my forties. Then I moved to the United States and started driving automatic cars (and on the other side of the road).

For the last two and a half months I have been in Europe driving manual cars again. Cost considerations took us down that route when we were looking to lease a car.

This move back to manual cars took a bit of getting use to at first. I even found that my muscle memory from having learnt on and driven a manual car for so long on the other side of the road was throwing me. I was now changing gear with my right hand instead of my left on which I learnt.

Finding the gears wasn’t always obvious at first. I would sometimes miss the one that I wanted, having to quickly hit the clutch again as I whacked the car into the correct gear. Great fun in busy city traffic, not!

I also had to remember to put the handbrake on when I parked the car. None of this putting the car in Park and all was good. On more than a couple of occasions I parked the car, turned the engine off, took my foot off the brake and the car started rolling. I had forgotten to put on the handbrake.

However, with time it all came back and I was enjoying working my way up and down through the gears. Indeed, felt as though I had more control of the car.

Then I returned to the US, last week in fact.

I am still getting use to being back behind the wheel of an automatic and the car making the gear decisions for me. I find myself pulling up to a junction and wanting to change down through the gears. Or approaching a hill and again wanting to change down to navigate the gradient.

I’ll get use to the change, but I find it amusing that something that I was a little anxious about returning to, in the space of a few months had become second nature and the new norm.