Distract Your Driving ... With Driving

It’s always a rough ride for me when I’m forced to drive my wife’s car — a delightfully reliable, cute, sea-foam green front-wheel drive appliance from Korea. For the first few blocks it must look like the car is missing the “student driver” tent. The car shudders and stops short as my left foot keeps mashing the left side of the brake pedal … thinking there’s a clutch pedal there.

I’m no scientist, but it might be a muscle memory thing, as I log tens of thousands of miles per year on a car with a manual transmission.

I love driving my manual-equipped car (Is there anything better than a perfect rev-matched downshift?) and I know I’m in the minority. In fact, it took me months to find my current car, as most people don’t want to be bothered by the third pedal.

But maybe more people should be bothered …

When I’m driving an automatic — when I finally get the hang of it — I usually prop my head up with my left hand and stare out the windshield. There’s really nothing to do. I put the car in “D,” and the car, well … Ds. It’s boring.

It got me thinking … maybe we could cut back on this whole “distracted driving” thing. (To borrow a line from Mugatu, the topic is “so hot right now.”) In fact, April is National Distracted Driving Awareness Month.

According to the National Highway Safety Administration, there were 416,000 injuries and 3,092 deaths from distracted driving crashes in 2010. And according to AAA Mid-Atlantic, “distracted driving” goes beyond cell phones.

“We tend to think of text messaging and cell phone use, but distraction is anything that takes motorists’ eyes from the road, their hands off the wheel, and their minds off the primary task of driving,” Jenny M. Robinson, of AAA Mid-Atlantic, said in a press release. “Driving distractions range from eating and drinking, to personal grooming, although text messaging typically takes your focus away from the road the longest.”

Personal grooming? Wow.

You know what might curb all the distractions? Forcing a driver to use both of his or her hands for, you know … driving. Instead of having that right hand attached to a coffee/cell phone/bar of soap, attach it to a shift knob. You’d be surprised. When the right arm has to row through a bunch of gears, the left arm falls naturally to the steering wheel. And there’s something of a natural deterrent against distracted driving built in to this system too. Engines — and the cars to which they’re attached — are expensive. Keep the tachometer in the red too long by not shifting and your mechanic will probably be able to send his kid to an Ivy League school.  

I’m not sure how many people still know how to drive manual-equipped cars and there certainly seem to be fewer cars available with sticks. It used to be that econo-boxes were fitted with manual transmissions and automatics were a costly option. Now, nearly every bread-and-butter sedan is offered solely with an automatic gearbox. Cars with sporting intentions have always been available with manual gearboxes — they were faster and more fuel efficient — but that’s not the case anymore.

Transmission technology has gotten so good that it’s eliminated the need for standard five- or six-speed manuals. Nissan has its continuously variable transmissions, Volkswagen and Mitsubishi have their dual clutch units (DCT and SST, respectively), and Porsche has its Doppelkupplung, and the list goes on. In almost every case, newer automatics perform better than their manual counterparts.

It’s kind of sad that traditional manual transmissions are on their way out, but it’s encouraging to see that these cars are, well … better (as much as it pains me to say it). And would there be fewer crashes if everyone drove a stick? Well ... all I know is that I'm less tempted to reach for my phone when I'm driving my car, the one with three pedals.  

Hopefully these automated-manuals (or whatever the heck they’re called) will be engaging enough to distract their drivers from being distracted — even if their left legs and right hands don’t have anything to do.