this isn't supposed to be the hard part about driving

[cellio]

Every time I drive Dani's car (a rare occurrence) I am reminded that driving an automatic transmission requires specific skills that I apparently haven't learned. I assume there's a trick to accelerating -- that you can regulate the gas flow (via the gas pedal) to kick the gears in when you want them to -- but I'm afraid I will be forever reaching for the clutch pedal and shifter while driving. :-) This has happened with multiple cars, so it's probably me and not the car.

(We're going to his company's winter party after work, I'd rather he drive home in the dark with the predicted sleet, and he's not cleared for my manual transmission. So since he takes the bus to work anyway, I just took his car today.)

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

Interesting. I have horrible problems adapting to operating systems (now that I use three of them every day) because my muscle memory fails me, but no problem switching between automatic and stick shift cars. How bizarre.

It could be a different sort of subconscious assimilation of data. When driving I try to predict what other cars are going to do so am constantly thinking about optimization, whereas when typing I just think "paste!" and my fingers do something (which is no longer always correct).