What car does your dad have, CCF? Are you allowed to drive it by yourself?

My dad just "got" me for a drive because i was ansious of driving a car but never really tought me as that you say, i didnt want him teaching me things i would later had to change at driving school, so hen i learnt i learnt with my teacher, and everytime i used to stall the car he realised i was nervous but he told me to calm down cause theres no problem.

I payed for about 25 classes, and it all costed me arround 1.400 €.

Yes my dad has a 2005 (i think im right about the year) Peugeot 406 with only 90 horse power, thats too poor for a so heavy car
and yes, my parents have to pay an incentive so i am allowed to drive it, but then, when i will be 25 i will be allowed to drive any car i want not having to pay any incentive, which im looking forward to actually.

And about the insurance i now can also drive any car, BUT, as i explained to you the other day if police asks me for insurance papers there wont be any problem because the car is still insured (at least that's what they have explained to me, sounds a bit odd but well) so the problem comes when you have an accident, the insurance wont cover the damage to third people, and imagine if the accident is very important and you have to indemnify someone with a millionare sanction, you are lost.

1. I could fix the car but not my neck.

2. you give good advice. Both my kids learned to drive in a drivers education class but they used automatics. The car that I had available for them to drive was a manual so the only thing I had to do was ride along as they developed enough coordination to drive a manual. Like you say: lots of bunny hops/stalls.

In Belgium as it is quite common to have parents teaching how to drive rather than an instructor, they made a study on young drivers and it appeared those who learned in this way drive better than people who learned with the usual "auto-école". Which is normal in a way since with the "auto-école" you learn to drive in 20 or 40 hours "only" due to the cost (and learn the rest by yourself alone ). When you learn with your parents you have 12 months (maximum) to learn to drive, so you can do much more than these 20-40 hours...

I mean I don't want to offend anyone who is a parent by telling them they shouldn't teach their kids how to drive, I'm just saying it's not always an ideal learning situation. My sister once came in telling our dad (in a jokey way) that her driving instructor (a young guy in his early 20s) had said he'd had taught her some bad habits (which was slightly snotty of him).

One of the reproach made against driving school is that sometimes they teach how to pass the test rather than how to drive
Just one example: I know someone who learned how to park with some tricks/hints depending on the car she was in, like "when the end of the other car is aligned with the B-pillar you turn your steering wheel that way", etc. which is quite annoying when you drive another car than the one on which you learned

Oh thats very true you have just reminded me off my driving teacher, he told me that exactly to park the car.

And the second is true as well, when i ot to drive my dad's car the trick wasnt useful

That's true, but passing the test is what matters at first. Afterwards that's when you can start learning more advanced driving. If you try to teach someone "good" driving, it probably won't be what they want when they take the test. They certainly won't like you doing defensive driving during the test (the way people drive in busy cities so they don't get walked all over by other traffic)

I know what you mean with things like parking, when I was learning I was taught how to reverse park using this awkward technique (similar to what you described). Once I passed I deliberately forgot about all that and just used my own co-ordination and spacial awareness (so far I haven't scraped into anything). Sometimes it's better just to go with your instinct rather than try to remember funny little procedures. It's like once you truly start to understand a subject, you forget some of the nonsense they teach you in school.

Isn't it learning to drive that matters?

In an ideal world, yes. Unfortunately driving instructors tend to force learners to drive like old ladies.

The world would be a safer place if we all drove like old ladies.

I think it’s true that driving schools only teach you to pass the test, which (in the UK, at any rate) tends to have less and less to do with actual driving (for example you can’t drive on a motorway until you’ve passed your test).
To return to the topic, I’ve been a passenger with some of the minority who are only licensed to drive automatics, and they’ve usually been terrible drivers … one lady, a retired headmistress (school principal), gave me a lift for about two miles in her automatic Vauxhall Astra (C) and I’ve never been so terrified in my life. I suppose that, as a professional driver covering about 60k miles a year at the time, I was easily terrified, but still … I believe that in Europe, at any rate, the provision for an auto-only driving licence should be abolished; everyone should have to learn on a manual. For one thing, you are much more in touch with the machine; for another, you never know when in an emergency you might have to drive a manual.

Hmmm not sure, driving too slowly make you feel asleep

The US alone has killed 40000 to 60000 people in car wrecks each year for the past 30 years or so. That makes at least 1.5 million people killed in the US by wrecks - most of which could have been avoided if people drove sober with reason and responsibility.

I guess to avoid that we would have to drive slow, asleep with grey hair, a sun bonnet and a dress

The official USA road fatality figures are closer to 40,000 nowadays, but that's still a lot of people, isn't it?
The official number of road deaths per year in the UK is only about 3000. Even if you consider the population differences between the two countries, you are still more likely to die driving in the USA than in the UK. That suprises me since our roads are so much more congested, but then maybe it's because we're too busy sitting in traffic jams to have as many crashes.

How high were road deaths in the US in the 50s and 60s? Everyone says cars were too powerful and not safe enough back then, so road casualities were astronomical, although there were probably less cars on the road.

Yes, current us rate is about 40,000 per year. As I recall it was 60,000 or more per year in the 1960's.

In Holland automatic transmission is an option that costs 1000-2000 euro's extra depending on car/make. Almost all cars are manuals.

The only automatics I have driven were a Chrysler Neon in Canada and a rental Volvo V40 in Holland. Even my 'loaners' (US-cars Chrysler Voyager/Saratoga, Dodge Ram Van) were manuals.

Now that cars are so well built you can buy an oldish, small car in UK for a few hundred pounds and it will generally be reliable enought to learn to drive with. It will almost certainly have a manual transmission as the inefficiencies of autos sap the power of a small engine. If you only start with 60 bhp you can't afford to throw much away in a slush pump.

My car is manual six speed and I have driven everything from three on the tree to six on the floor. My wife has a small auto which seems OK until you want to pass a truck on a side road, but is fine in town.

How many drivers can use a manual without synchromesh these days?