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this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
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Bicycles
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Same, but then again, I still don't understand the appeal of automatic transmissions in cars (despite that being all I own these days). I generally prefer simpler machines with less stuff that can break.
Bicycles should be extremely simple. You pedal to go, and if you want to go faster for the same RPM, you push the chain up a gear. If you have gears in the front and back, you shift the front every few times you shift the back. That's it, that's all the complexity I need in a bicycle.
What happens if you're out on a ride and your battery dies? You just can't shift anymore? That's terrible! Or what if a thief steals your fancy electronic shifter? What if the SW goes bad and the pairing breaks? There's just so much that can go wrong, and not a lot of backup options. If my derailleur gets messed up on a ride, I can probably still use a handful of gears, enough to get home. If a shifter breaks and I have tools, I can adjust the indexer to keep it in a decent gear to get home. It's like that manual transmission, if something breaks, I can probably work around it.
Being able to drink a soda while accelerating to freeway speeds is nice. Not having to shift a thousand times to move 50 feet in stop and go traffic is also nice. Manual transmissions are fun when you're driving for fun. For everything else I think automatic is way more convenient.
Eh, I didn't have too much trouble with stop and go traffic, I just left it in first with my foot on the clutch. The worst part is parking on hills, I learned to drive a stick in the Seattle area, and I had to parallel park on a ton of hills. Inevitably, some jerk would park really close behind me and I'd nearly hyperventilate pulling out w/o rolling back into them.
But honestly, stop and go sucks regardless of the transmission, so I just try to avoid it. I go to work early and cut out a bit early to miss rush hour, which works most of the time unless there's an accident or something. That's not feasible for everyone, but I have that flexibility, so it's nice, and I only need to go in 2x/week as well (I'm pretty spoiled).
I wish I could bike to work, but it would take nearly 2 hours each way due to the distance. Maybe I'll throw on a Bafang and see if I can get that down to an hour :).
I relied on my handbrake a lot when I was driving a manual in hilly cities.
I did at first, but eventually got tired of it and learned to rev the engine just right to not slide backward. I definitely use it for parking though.
Oh man, learning to drive in Seattle sounds really scary, especially a stick. You can't even see what's in front of you at the top of some of those hills. You probably developed masterful clutch control from those parking experiences though.
Edit: for the biking to work thing, can you take the bus or light rail part of the way? That's what I used to do, when I was still going into the office. I'd take the bus to a stop that was a couple miles from work, and then bike the rest of the way. The only sucky part about it was if there were already too many cyclists on the bus, since that meant there was nowhere to stow my bike and I couldn't get on. Then I'd have to wait for the next bus or just ride the work. One time I chased the bus until one of the cyclists got off, then I sprinted on my bike as hard as I could to get to the next stop before the bus. That was pretty fun.
Yup, waiting at a stoplight on a hill in the pouring rain was not fun... Never had an accident though.
That's amazing. You must have had a wonderful instructor. I learned to drive in L.A., which was also a harrowing experience. I'll say this, most Seattle area drivers drive me crazy having come from Southern California. They're so fucking slow, and there's always some slow poke in the passing lane keeping pace with the slow poke next to him, holding up traffic for thousands of people. The other day some dude in front of me was going 25 mph and merging into the freeway with a 55 mph speed limit. You sound like you're probably an exception though, and a good driver. The stick shift thing alone sets you apart.
Yeah, my dad was pretty great (he's been driving a Miata for as long as I remember). I also lived on a hill, and the second and third cars I had were manuals (first car died within a year of getting my license).
Honestly, Seattle drivers when I lived there were some of my favorite. Yeah, they drive closer to the speed limit, but they're generally really nice. If I put my signal to merge, they make space. If I come up behind them in the passing lane, they move over. I'm now in Utah, and the opposite is true. If I signal, they close the gap to prevent me from merging. If I come up behind them, they slow down. If I move around to pass them, they speed up. If I honk because they're sleeping at a light, there's a non-zero chance they'll get out of their car and confront me. I've gotten used to it by now though.
That said, I'm not a big fan of California drivers, but they do get one thing right: they keep the speed up in rush hour. They absolutely cannot handle a little rain on the road (I remember something like 5 accidents when there was a bit of rain when I visited), and I'm guessing icy roads are much worse (we blame a lot of winter accidents here on Cali transplants, not sure how true that is). Cali drivers are super impatient, and they're liberal with their use of the horn. But at least they can keep the speed up in traffic, I'll give them that.
That's true about the merging. People are generally pretty friendly about letting you over up here. They also respect pedestrians, which I appreciate. But it's hard to deal with how damned slow everyone is! Haha.
Eh, if you flash your lights, they'll usually move over. But honestly, I prefer friendly over getting to my destination 10% faster.
I've tried that, and then they made sure that I couldn't pass at all. They seem to view themselves as little self-appointed traffic police. I've seen that sentiment reflected here on Lemmy too. A few months ago I moved to a more rural area outside the city and the drivers are equally as slow, but not friendly, which is a far worse combination.
Hmm, things must have changed in the last 10 years or so... :)
E. Washington seems to have more considerate drivers these days though. Almost everyone stays right except to pass, and there's not nearly as much traffic anyway, so I can usually cruise at whatever speed I think I can get away with.
I try to avoid driving whenever I go visit, so I guess I don't notice the self-righteous drivers as much and just chalk it up to a bad egg here and there. But every time I go back, I seem to see more of those bad eggs, so maybe the bad traffic is finally annoying enough people to change the driving culture. Or maybe it's a post-COVID thing, idk, I know drivers here in Utah got a lot worse since the pandemic (apparently shootings on the highway are now a thing??; chill people!).
We have those self-righteous people here as well, and I honestly wish the police would go out and ticket them for obstructing the flow of traffic instead of going after speeders. I think that would do a lot to help curb road rage.
Hell yes! It's against the law, but it is never enforced. I've even thought about writing my representatives about it.
I got out to Eastern Washington this spring for the first time ever. I was expecting backwards, Hicksville, but it was actually more like a classic slice of Americana. I really enjoyed myself out there. Plus, there's soooo much wildlife out there. It was amazing! We saw around 50 deer, some elk, probably 100 turkeys, a bear, a snake, and some fish. It's a wonderful place if you're into nature.
Yup, it's like where I live, but without the national parks. I've considered moving out just east of the mountains to be closer to family without sacrificing the sun I love so much.
You just hit my nostalgia nerve. Damn I miss my 5-speed.
Yeah, and EVs have essentially killed that. And no, a "manual transmission" on an EV isn't the same at all, I know those are fake gears and I'm having none of it.
Most EVs have barely any gearbox to speak of, usually one gear for reverse and one for forward. If you like simplicity and less stuff to break, an electric drive train is about as simple as you can get.
The battery does have some more complex tech in it. And of course, sadly, all the software stuff that doesn't have much to do with the actual driving. That is usually the worst part.
Yeah, the software and data collection are pretty big parts of why I don't want an EV. In theory, they should be dead simple, since the parts that can fail are limited to the steering and braking systems, simple electric motors, and the batteries. But there's just so much artificial complexity in them that I really don't want to bother with.
For a commuter, I just want to get to work and back, I don't need driving aids (I drive the same route every day, and never at night) or a fancy screen, I just need something to listen to (could honestly just be my bone conduction headphones) and for the battery to not explode in my garage. I care more about fancy features in a family car, but I also care about range, and I need 400+ miles range for it to make sense (I do 800+ mile road trips at least once/year), so for now, my family car will be ICE/hybrid.
EVs should be simple. Just scale up an e-bike to go highway speeds and stick a bigger chassis on it so I don't die if I get rear-ended. That's it. I don't need anything fancy, just keep it cheap and reliable.
have had 3 different manual cars, the only one that didn't have clutch issues was the rx-7, my vw golf and ford fiesta had terrible transmissions. like made out of duct tape and bubble gum bad.
since then, had hondas and they're built like little brick shithouses - excellent life, fuel consumption etc. they make the 80s and 90s cars I owned look like yugos.
Nice. I guess I was lucky, because the two I had didn't have any issues with the clutch (Honda Civic and Saturn SC2 coupe), and both gave me 200k+ miles. The Saturn had problems with an oil leak into the engine, but other than that, it was pretty trouble-free aside from a starter issue.
What ever happened to Saturn? They were everywhere in the 00's. Did Hyundai and Kia put them out of business or something?
It was a GM brand that largely took sales from other GM brands, and in 2008 during the recession, GM cut a lot of its brands, and Saturn was one of them (as well as Pontiac and Saab). It basically absorbed Saturn into Chevrolet.
Ah okay. I had a Pontiac in my 20s. It was pretty similar to one of the Saturn models. It was actually a great car, which really surprised me.
But a clutch is cheap to replace. A whole automatic transmission costs a fortune to replace.
the ford was, the vw, I blame the mechanic, they fixed it three times, and got it fixed right once, eventually, after weeks. like, fuck man, it's a vw golf, I could probably knock rocks together and forge a replacement clutch in three weeks....
and in all the automatics I've owned, I've never had to replace a transmission. now, like I said, they've all been hondas, I hear that has something to do with it, but yeah... my experience was more issues with clutches in manuals than any transmission issues in automatics. My uncle says that domestically mfg'rd clutches from the 80s sucked compared to the 60s and 70s, but I have no practical experience there.
I do miss being able to pop the clutch to start it :D
Oh man, my 1971 VW Super Beetle had a horrible clutch. I was always having to get that thing adjusted. I wonder if VW just makes shitty clutches since you also had problems with one.
I just rode nine weeks across the Alps with my SRAM X0 Transmission and the battery lasted the whole trip. A spare doesn't way too much though. A rock hit my transmission hard and it needed slight adjustment. I took less than a second and I did not have to get of my bike. Also, installing the transmission was super easy. All in all, I think it is way more convenient than mechanical shifting, if you are willing to pay the price. It's probably not worth it for most people.
I'm not worried about one trip soon after purchase, I'm worried about one trip about 5-10 years after purchase. By then, I'll probably have misplaced the spare or the spare has died, and I'd be SOL.
I rarely ride for pleasure, it's almost exclusively for transportation, so I'm not going to be doing a ton of prep for each ride. I want things to fail gracefully so I can reliably get home. Having shifting completely fail is a pretty big deal.