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Comment by UI_at_80x24 | Hacker News Reader

I completely agree with you, but technology is encouraging us to 'rely' on it's helpful beeps, alerts, and flashes.

Soon we will have trained an entire generation to 'drive-by-sensors' and not senses.

Over-reliance on technology is a plague on driving quality. This is actually why I (and I realize this isn't realistic) think that new drivers should be required to learn to driv and pass the driving test using a manual transmission vehicle without driver aids such as blind-spot detection, lane-assist, assistive braking, etc.

Each year, cars become more and more insulated and isolated from the reality of driving, which is incredibly dangerous. Technology is exascerbating(sp?) this problem. As you say, driving via sensors rather than senses.

People must understand _what_ the car is doing in order to really know how to drive safely and competently. Lower-tech cars force people into this.

> manual transmission vehicle

Why? I get that there is going to be a lot of missing sensors, but the automatic transmission is now so ubiquitous that it makes no sense to require you not to. I understand it's a nice additional skill, but in the modern era it in no way proves/disproves one's ability to function on the roadway. In fact, once these sensors all become as equally ubiquitous, there will be very little argument to be made against them as well. Might as well make an argument that you everyone should drive a Benz Patent Motor Car just to really "feel" the car.

Because a manual transmission makes you engage more with the car. You must control it more actively, thus teaching drivers to focus on and observe the car and road rather than waiting for directives from sensors like blind-spot detection lights. An automatic mentally allows the driver to feel and operate more like a passenger than a pilot. Manual trans prevents this.

It's not about some pretentious "feel" like porsche-bros espouse. It's about engagement and forming good habits so drivers are more self aware and self sufficient on the road.

> An automatic mentally allows the driver to feel and operate more like a passenger than a pilot. Manual trans prevents this.

I don't understand, they are still steering the craft, as well as adjusting it's speed. You haven't removed any of the important requirements for driving - being able to steer the vehicle and modify it's velocity. The ability to use a clutch and change gears simply compounds the difficulty of that exercise, it doesn't cause the driver to necessarily engage with the car in a way affects the drivers skill, it may have a higher skill floor, but it doesn't really make for a higher performance ceiling.

Your could make the same arguments for bringing back manual chokes. I think it's better to reduce the driver's workload so they can keep both hands on the wheel and devote more attention to what's happening outside.

> so they can keep both hands on the wheel and devote more attention to what's happening outside.

That was my point though. When driving a manual, your hands are either A) on the wheel, or B) one on wheel, other shifting gears. You can't really do much else. Maybe drink coffee if you're sitting in the same gear over distance, but in suburban traffic with stop lights and signs and turns, you can't afford to do much more than drive, shift, and execute maneuvers like lane changes, turns, etc.

There's far less opportunity to do things like text, read, rubberneck, etc. I.E. Devote more attention to what's happening outside.

At the times that an automatic most easily lets your attention wander, driving at a consistent speed, a manual does no more to keep you engaged.

It keeps you more focused on the car at lights and turns, but that might be a bad thing. I want to be focused on the cross traffic, not my engine.

If your hypothesis is correct then we would expect to see auto insurers offering lower rates for manual transmission vehicles due to a lower risk of crashes. Do you have any evidence for that?

To be fair, that would be hopelessly skewed by the propensity of illegal racers (and other people who think it's fun to drive powerful cars really fast on public roads) to prefer manuals.

I'd argue that those people are bad drivers.

That's the point.

As a driver of both types of cars, this is completely false, in my experience. Having a clutch pedal doesn't make drivers more aware or capable. On the contrary, it's a small cognitive load that can be freed, then put somewhere else.

A bad driver isn't thwarted by a stick shift. They'll do the bare minimum to keep the car on the road. These drivers are notoriously bad at selecting gears, so they usually solve that issue buying diesel-powered cars with a more forgiving power curve.

It's just one additional thing that requires brain cycles which would be better spent on situational awareness.

In the UK (where I learnt to drive) you can take the test on either transmission, but if you take it in an automatic then that's all you can drive, whereas if you pass the test in a manual you're qualified for both.

Additionally, manual cars are far more ubiquitous in the UK than they are in Canada (where I live now) and the US (at least, as far as I know). Because of this pretty much everyone learns on a manual car.

> In the UK (where I learnt to drive) you can take the test on either transmission, but if you take it in an automatic then that's all you can drive, whereas if you pass the test in a manual you're qualified for both.

That's totally fine and totally fair. Manual cars do take additional skill to operate. My argument is that those skills don't make you a better driver overall. If you were to put a manual and automatic driver in an automatic car, the manual driver won't necessarily be the better driver by virtue of their being able to shift gears.

Anyone who's relying on driver assists as their primary safety (rather than just as a backup to their senses) is a bad driver. Bad drivers exist, and aren't going to magically become good drivers if you take away these aids, they'll just cause an accident instead. The NHTSA can provide volumes of actual data to refute your anecdata. https://www.nhtsa.gov/equipment/driver-assistance-technologi...

> new drivers should be required to learn to driv

This hypothetical situation is part of the learning process. That is the point. People __learn__ to drive without the assists. Not to all of a sudden revoke a current drivers' ability to use them.

This would help educate drivers in their formative stage in order to reduce the number of "bad drivers" on the road later.

> Soon we will have trained an entire generation to 'drive-by-sensors' and not senses.

I honestly believe that driver safety will approve more rapidly when that happens than ever before.

I trust silicon more than I trust meat.

> I trust silicon more than I trust meat.

I'm halfway onboard with you. The difference is in what I trust it to do. I trust meat more than silicon when meat is driving attentively and safely. There are many drivers out there with fantastic control of their vehicle, especially in bad situations.

The other half is that I don't trust meat to actually drive attentively and safely. I trust silicon to actually drive safely, unlike people.

Sensors need to prove themselves, but I'm optimistic that senors will soon be better. I have one set of eyes looking in one direction (whatever my field of view is, lets assume 90 degrees for discussion). I can never look two directions at once, but in fact I need to be looking all 4 at once. If I allow enough margin of safety I can get by since danger general is coming from at most two predictable directions but there are situations where one of the other direction has a danger that I can't predict. (for example: right turns where I look left for the danger of cars coming and miss the pedestrian trying to cross from the right - since pedestrians are rare a the intersections I drive nobody expects them)

I use my adaptive cruise control to prevent tailgating. Any time I find myself getting annoyed with a slow jerk blocking the left lane, I force myself to turn it on to make sure that I don't subconsciously creep up on his butt (because I know that's a thing that I sometimes do). ... I have also taken my owners manual's advice on the use of the high-beam flasher ... it calls it a 'flash to pass' ... so now I give a little blink of the brights after setting the cruise. Probably safer, but sometimes I fear that it may induce road rage.

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