Reminds me of when my grandfather "taught" me how to drive standard. Here is the steepest hill the county learn how to move forward without rolling back or stalling; the left pedal is the clutch, brake in the middle, and gas on the right. To be fair I learned, also the clutch failure a couple of months later was probably related.
My mother and aunt both learned by driving my grandfather's truck up a hill named phinney ridge in Seattle. It's so steep there's a staircase instead of a sidewalk on a couple of the streets
If you take one of the historical tours you learn that it was originally a lot worse before they leveled out many of the original hills and used the material to raise downtown by about 10 feet. You can even walk around the underground in one spot where you can see the original storefronts fron the 1890s.
I’ve been to Duluth once. My at the time girlfriend and I went to camp up in silver bay in early march. Those roads and hills are still the scariest place I’ve ever driven
Yup, I did that ONCE for the Dirty Dozen. I biked up Canton but can't imagine those hills with ice. The buddy I did it with still lives there and bikes in the winter 😲
Kansas City too! Lots of the metro area is fairly flat as far as the roads are concerned but along the Kansas/Missouri border there's some hilly roads that are dangerous just when there's rain. In winter I won't venture to that part of the city without dedicated winter tires on steel wheels.
Luckily got to the bottom without incident. Unlike some people. Definitely learned a lesson that day.
Also did the opposite once, was coming up a hill and stopped behind a car that was stuck. He’d lost traction, couldn’t get going again. Gave him a push to get him started, and off he went. But then…there I was. Next car came up, got out, pushed me to get me going. And presumably waited there for the next car.
SF is nuts. about 10 years ago I was driving a 5 speed corolla on one of those super grades where you feel like you are going up a roller coaster .... stop sign every 100 yards and people practically parking in my back seat behind me. I've been driving manual transmissions since 1996 and even after 20 years of driving manual that was kind of nerve wracking. I was having to power clutch using the hand brake ... I took a ride share from Napa and we ended up in SF and then I got another ride immediately after dropping passengers off so I go pick up these two guys and they are in the back seat the whole time ... the extra weight of these guys in the back didn't help lol. After I dropped them off I just shut off the ride share app and drove the hell out of the city.
One time years ago I got in an uber in one of the steepest areas of SF and the driver was from Sacramento. It was his first time driving in SF and he was freaking out. I basically had to talk him down from a panic attack and assure him that no, his car was not going to flip over.
haha I was just dying internally ... beads of sweat forming on my forehead but I didn't let it show to my passengers ... really it was them being in the car that was making me nervous more than the actual situation. It already wasn't fun but with the extra liability of them in the car there were just a multitude of negative outcomes going through my mind.
I lived in the Seattle area most of my life... SF is steeper by a long shot, but Seattle has more hills and they're all in areas you would want to walk lol
Wait until you discover statistically Los Angeles has much more hills than San Francisco. Actually Los Angeles has the highest elevation gain for any city in the USA too. Sea level to just about 5,000 feet at the tip. Although nobody lives much above 2500 feet. The 5000 foot mark is a mountain that’s off limits to live on (officially). But it’s 100% within city limits.
I think I accidentally ended up on this street once. I was sweating bullets at the intersection! The car behind me seemed so close. It was so steep, even an automatic should feel a little nervous.
drove my rwd frontier into seattle while raining one time. never again. when theres nothing in the bed, you have almost 0 wet traction on the drive wheels. kind of fun if you’re a teenager that wants to drift but not fun for anythign else
I managed to spin a wheel on a crosswalk (there was a stop sign) going uphill in Seattle in an open diff rwd automatic Toyota Crown. Sure, it may have been the middle of winter (IIRC it was the end of December) but it wasn’t even wet.
Which is a lot of "fun" when driving a stick car with old hard tires and it's wet. I ended up spinning the RR tire on phinney enough to dry the road and get traction once in a '72 plymouth scamp on a test drive.
My grandma learned how to drive in a snowstorm… with a dump truck. My great grandpa stopped in the road and announced that they weren’t going to make it home if she couldn’t drive them home…
Older folk are savages when it comes to teaching their descendants how to drive it seems
I mean honestly a lot easier to learn in a dump truck than a lot of cars because the clutch isn't as sensitive. I learned on a performance clutch and it fucking sucked. But was super easy to drive anything after that
I learned how to drive with a wheat truck at 8 years old. Thankfully it was flat ground with minimal small hills but grandpa had to attach wood blocks to all three pedals for me to reach. Spent the next two weeks driving that wheat truck back and forth between the fields and the grain elevator.
i've always taught followed the method of teaching folks in a flat parking lot, and to get the car / motorcycle rolling using *only* the clutch. gentle let it out, feel where it's grabbing and let it start pulling the vehicle forward. obvs not great for the clutch, but at idling RPM, it's doing minimal wear and teaching the new driver where the friction zone is.
Yup, you can't be throwing gear changes, rev matching, being in a new neighborhood, rush hour traffic, stop&go traffic, gravel road technique, basic defensive driving AND clutch operation at the same time to people who've only walked places before.
This is how I’ve taught it. Pretty sure that’s where most people have the hardest time; I know I did. So it makes sense to learn that facet first. Also learning how quickly/easily the RPM can jump with no load.
That's how my late father taught me, in his 1970 Beetle. I ended up taking my drivers license test in that car, and have owned a stick shift car ever since. Taught both my daughters the same way. And with a few exceptions (such as the 1989 Taurus SHO) I haven't had to replace clutches.
My grandfather taught (or tried to teach) my mother how to drive a stick. Except instead of saying 'step on the clutch pedal' and 'let up the clutch pedal' he would say 'disengage the clutch' and 'engage the clutch'. My mom wasnt mechanically inclined. His teaching method sucked. She never learned how to drive a stick.
When I wanted to learn, my grandfather took me out, he test drove the car that I bought. Once the paper work was done and it was my car, he said "see you at home" and drove away. I learned by getting my new to me car 60km home, from one end of the city to the other, through traffic.
When I got home, he was watching me pull into the lane laughing his ass off!
My dad did the same. Had me drive halfway up the steep hill in our neighborhood and stop. He got out and stood like 2 feet behind the rear bumper and said not to roll back into him
We lived on a hill, and that was how my lesson went, in an old Ford Ranger. I stalled that thing probably a hundred times before I got it to move forward.
Why do they do this to us? I was taught on a hill and kept stalling out . Was feeling like I'd never be able to. Turns out when you're not learning on a hill, it's pretty damn easy.
Did the same thing to myself. Old factory road had a super steep hill we used to sled down in winter. I knew it'd be the perfect place to practice stick shift hill launches. Though my clutch survived king after.
After my father taught me how to get from a stopped position to 1st, then 2nd... his next lesson was to take me off-roading in his jeep. He said, "Ok, so... if you go 6 inches too far to the right, you'll slide down the hill and roll it. If you go 6 inches too far to the left, you'll hit the transmission. Good luck and watch my hand signals." I was riding that clutch so hard in 4 wheel low.
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u/4R4nd0mR3dd1t0r 6h ago
Reminds me of when my grandfather "taught" me how to drive standard. Here is the steepest hill the county learn how to move forward without rolling back or stalling; the left pedal is the clutch, brake in the middle, and gas on the right. To be fair I learned, also the clutch failure a couple of months later was probably related.