How not to drive a bus

[Beebo]

An image of the driver concerned has been released

so not Rolf Harris then?

 

[Crackle]

so not Rolf Harris then?

early parole?

 

[Piemaster]

if you're clever and very quick you can drive a manually with only one leg!

if i was thinking of becoming a bus driver just the fact they are all auto's now would put me right off
Cheers Ed

Theres a good number of older buses that have pre-selector gearboxes, sort of a latter day tiptronic system so don't have clutches anyway.

I've switched between autos and manuals a few times. The autos were all on more up-market cars, the manuals on the cheaper stuff. I've had people tell me they don't like auto boxes, "Ever driven one?" - "No." . Seems to be a resistance to them in UK, though it's maybe less so now with the tipronic type boxes.

 

[Profpointy]

Theres a good number of older buses that have pre-selector gearboxes, sort of a latter day tiptronic system so don't have clutches anyway.

I've switched between autos and manuals a few times. The autos were all on more up-market cars, the manuals on the cheaper stuff. I've had people tell me they don't like auto boxes, "Ever driven one?" - "No." . Seems to be a resistance to them in UK, though it's maybe less so now with the tipronic type boxes.

well i've driven autos and can't bear them. You ease off the throttle for a bend and the wretched thing changes UP! Ok for crawling through traffic maybe but utter fiddle otherwise. In mitigation I once drove an Amercian style big Australian ford - 6litre V8 - think Cadillac rather than a Granada let's say and the 3 speed leisurely autobox was bearable on that. It had similar performance to a morris minor by the way. Basically an engine can pump sludge round a turbine or drive the car - I prefer the 2nd option.

And as for flappy paddle things - great when new maybe, but what about 100,000 miles and 10 years later? Or maybe the gears are still all there but the black box says no.

Lack of a manual gearchange has put me right off buying a Bentley - so that's their loss

"Include me out" as the phrase goes.

 

[young Ed]

Theres a good number of older buses that have pre-selector gearboxes, sort of a latter day tiptronic system so don't have clutches anyway.

I've switched between autos and manuals a few times. The autos were all on more up-market cars, the manuals on the cheaper stuff. I've had people tell me they don't like auto boxes, "Ever driven one?" - "No." . Seems to be a resistance to them in UK, though it's maybe less so now with the tipronic type boxes.

don't like the sound of those pre-selector boxes either!

it probably comes from me mainly driving tractors where you put it into gear, could be low range first or could be high range top gear, and just pull away and leave it in that gear and you can't/don't change on the move so i would feel an auto box is doing too much shifting and playing about. also my dads old van had a semi auto box and that was only trouble mechanically and he had the whole thing replaced one

the one thing i am dreading about learning to drive is changing gears on the fly, even though i can do it fine and smoothly on manual motorbikes and quad bikes
Cheers Ed

 

[CopperBrompton]

Modern autos are a lot better than ye olde ones, but they are still 'orrible things. I waited almost two months to find the exact car I wanted as 95% of that particular car are autos.

 

[young Ed]

[QUOTE 3343209, member: 259"]Honest, Ed, it's dead easy, and if you have already ridden a bike and a quad it'll take you about 1 minute.

My daughter just got her driving licence after driving for three weeks from scratch,[/QUOTE]
yeah, shouldn't be too hard hopefully, congrats to your daughter!

other bit i dread is driving in traffic and towns etc, bits like multiple lanes one for going straight on one for going left and a third for going right still push my mind on the bike! roundabouts are just mad thing and those ones with multiple lanes where you go in a different one depending on how far ound you plan to go and indicating and knowing when to etc is simply well beyond me!
Cheers Ed

 

[Over The Hill]

Friend of mine had a broken left leg in plaster for some weeks. He borrowed his dads auto car and drove that around until he got better.

I really don't care where a but driver puts his leg that he does not need to drive the bus as long as he is comfortable and otherwise able to drive it OK.

 

[Piemaster]

well i've driven autos and can't bear them. You ease off the throttle for a bend and the wretched thing changes UP! Ok for crawling through traffic maybe but utter fiddle otherwise. In mitigation I once drove an Amercian style big Australian ford - 6litre V8 - think Cadillac rather than a Granada let's say and the 3 speed leisurely autobox was bearable on that. It had similar performance to a morris minor by the way. Basically an engine can pump sludge round a turbine or drive the car - I prefer the 2nd option.

And as for flappy paddle things - great when new maybe, but what about 100,000 miles and 10 years later? Or maybe the gears are still all there but the black box says no.

Lack of a manual gearchange has put me right off buying a Bentley - so that's their loss

"Include me out" as the phrase goes.

I'd take an auto over a manual most times, conversely to being a 'fiddle' I find that sticking it in D and pushing the accelerator seems quite simple to all that gear changing thing. The Aston just wouldn't be the same without it. No idea about the transmission in the commuter - I sit in the back and James does the driving.
Auto/DSG/tiptronic is the way things are going with luxury and high performance, it'll be more common on family cars eventually. Self parking was a new feature on E-Class Mercs not so long ago - you can get it on a Focus now. This stuff trickles down. AFAIK BMW autos have more ratios than the manuals. Modern autos are different from the old 3 speed Getrag autos, though it was handy having a torque converter as it saved clutches when pulling tree stumps out with the Range Rover.
100,000 miles or 10 years for a black box? I'm sure a quick ebay seach could find a DSG box with that mileage on it.

Only thing I find annoying about autos the price premium over manuals, maybe be a catch-22 thing as there aren't as many produced, because of the price premium..

 

[vernon]

The Aston just wouldn't be the same without it.

When my kid brother lent me his Aston Martin for a weekend, his driving advice was to tuck my left foot behind my right foot to avoid the temptation to use two feet on the pedals. Despite my reservations I found it to be easy to do but the driving experience was not as exciting as I'd anticipated. It's all well and good sitting in a hand stitched leather and burr walnut trimmed cockpit and having a huge engine at your disposal but the mushiness of the transmission detracted somewhat from the joy of driving. Astons are great pieces of eye candy but they promise more than they deliver on the driving experience front.

 

[Brandane]

Only thing I find annoying about autos the price premium over manuals, maybe be a catch-22 thing as there aren't as many produced, because of the price premium..

Most modern lorries are automatic now; in fact I have heard that a MANUAL gearbox is now a £4000 optional extra on Volvo trucks!

 

[Piemaster]

When my kid brother lent me his Aston Martin for a weekend, his driving advice was to tuck my left foot behind my right foot to avoid the temptation to use two feet on the pedals. Despite my reservations I found it to be easy to do but the driving experience was not as exciting as I'd anticipated. It's all well and good sitting in a hand stitched leather and burr walnut trimmed cockpit and having a huge engine at your disposal but the mushiness of the transmission detracted somewhat from the joy of driving. Astons are great pieces of eye candy but they promise more than they deliver on the driving experience front.

But how on earth else would one travel to the golf club?


Oh, hang on. I seem to have made a typo there when I wrote 'Aston'. I obviously meant 'Skoda'

 

[Over The Hill]

well i've driven autos and can't bear them. You ease off the throttle for a bend and the wretched thing changes UP! Ok for crawling through traffic maybe but utter fiddle otherwise. In mitigation I once drove an Amercian style big Australian ford - 6litre V8 - think Cadillac rather than a Granada let's say and the 3 speed leisurely autobox was bearable on that. It had similar performance to a morris minor by the way. Basically an engine can pump sludge round a turbine or drive the car - I prefer the 2nd option.

And as for flappy paddle things - great when new maybe, but what about 100,000 miles and 10 years later? Or maybe the gears are still all there but the black box says no.

Lack of a manual gearchange has put me right off buying a Bentley - so that's their loss

"Include me out" as the phrase goes.

Those against Auto boxes always seem to quote either old 3-gear boxes from 50 years ago or American cars.
Modern auto boxes are a world away from what they used to be, and really Americans cannot make cars!

The only down side with modern gearboxes is that they still are not ideal in small cars - there still can be a bit of harshness to them. But stick it in a decent size car and preferably with a diesel engine and they are fantastic. OK you cannot drive like a boy racer as it really does not suit the car but they just seem to choose the right gear and get on with it.
They take a lot of stress out of driving and even in traffic they are just relaxing and easy.

 

[CopperBrompton]

Those against Auto boxes always seem to quote either old 3-gear boxes from 50 years ago or American cars.

Nope, the most recent autos I've driven were cars one and three years old respectively (both German). They are all very smooth and competent at wafting from A to B but absolutely dire if you actually want to drive the thing. Dropping a gear for a bend, for example, is just a pain in an auto: even the latest autos do the requested change when and if they feel like it.

 

[fimm]

I used to have a friend who had one leg, the other having been amputated through the hip. She drove a normal automatic, which she got through the Motability scheme. One time, when she got a new car, she found the position of the pedals wasn't comfortable for her. Not long after, she gave me a lift.
"I'm sorry if my driving seems a bit jerky," she said, "but they couldn't move the pedals across for me. What they've done is move the brake round the accellerator..." (or the accellerator round the brake, I cannot remember - anyway the end result was that the pedals were the other way round to usual!)
The next time I got a lift from her, she'd got used to the new position of the pedals and everything was fine.