Published on 12, July, 2020
I'm trying to learn to drive at the moment. I've had 30 hours of lessons and it's mostly going fine, but I'm really struggling to cope with the sensations of the car/ road. I can manage most of it, usually, but I really struggle with the feeling of changing gear, which is making hill starts particularly really difficult because I don't like making the engine rev because it's loud and feels horrible. And to make it worse my instructor has just got a new car and it's it's really loud.
Does anyone have any experience of learning to drive and overcoming the sensory stuff that I'm finding quite overwhelming?
Don't learn in an automatic and pass your test in an automatic. If you do that you can only ever drive an automatic, which may be a problem later in life such as if you need to drive someone else's car or a company car, etc.
Yes just like to add though that there are so many automatic cars now that I don't think having an automatic only license is that limiting these days
My wife passed her test in an automatic so can only drive and automatic, which means I have always had to select an automatic company car. But, yes, they are much easier to drive and these days drive really well. I wouldn't knock them and most now come with a reasonable DSG type gearbox so in manual / sport mode perform really close to a manual anyway.
Years ago, UK car tax was based on the diameter of the cylinder bore so British cars had gutless, slow-revving engines which meant only large engines were suitable for automatic gearboxes - little engines had so little power that the 2-speed auto gearboxes of the time would run out of puff at 30 mph.
This meant almost all British cars were manual except the expensive luxury cars where the owner could afford the tax on a large engine where the torque of the engine was grunty and flexible enough to cope with just 2 gears..
Since the 80s with 16V engines and 4, 5 and 6-speed autos, it's been easy to mate a small engine to autoboxes successfully.
I learned in a manual but I prefer autos every time - especially with the terrible stop/start traffic jams of the local roads - they are soooooo much easier to drive. Manuals are really only 'fun' if it's a high performance car - other than that, they're a PITA..
It might be getting a bit more like the States in that respect. Unexpectedly, the garage i last took my car into offered me an automatic as a courtesy car for a day or two - first time that's happened.
Of course, my anxious disposition towards driving means I still look forward to driverless cars one day. :)