How not to drive a bus

[Paulus]

I think the women passenger, instead of complaining to the bus company, trying to get the bus driver the sack, should of asked the driver why he had his foot up on the dashboard. Then the women involved would of got an answer. Then taken it further if it warranted it. Too many people are out there trying to cause trouble, thinking they are being clever, where none exists.

 

[Piemaster]

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.

Must have taken a lot of concentration at first to get over the habit, and a nightmare for anyone else getting into it - I have enough trouble with lights/wipers stalks swapping sides on hire cars. I'd think most of the youtube clips of cars driving into rivers/over other cars/barriers/whatever are probably autos, a little confusion or panic over something and press accelerator instead of the brake.
That said theres no reason AFAIK you can't have the pedals wherever you want them - it's just a convention thing. Think the Model T and other vintage cars had a different arrangement. How about the rally 'left foot braking' with the brake actually on the left? Same with taps, usual arrangement is cold left, hot right.

 

[GrasB]

I tried several cars before I made a decision on which to get. All of them were auto only. Of the ones I drove the BMW setup was best in my opinion. Yeah 8 speeds sounded a lot but in reality you only use 8th when cruising at high speed & 1st gear is so low that in a manual gearbox you'd have a hard time actually using it. In terms of control tap the leaver & you had manual control for about 20-30s which allowed me to pick the right gear to just bung it in manual mode & just paddle shift.

Most autos these days allow you full gear control either sequential style on the tunnel or paddles on the steering wheel. In the cars I leased all were auto only. However, except for on the motorway & low speed (<15mph) town driving I was in manual mode changing gear manually. Oh I've heard talk of 9 & 10 speed gear boxes.

Oh, btw this has nothing to do with busses, lorries, etc.

 

[gavroche]

Give me a manual gearbox anytime. I don't like automatics, they are just so boring to drive. I like to tell the car what to do, not the other way round.

 

[Piemaster]

BMW setup was best in my opinion. Yeah 8 speeds sounded a lot

I had a rather nice hire car upgrade to an M5. I'd agree generally about the number of gears in it. Only thing was after switching between auto and manual modes a bit while I had it, I decided it was as good as me at getting the right gear and often better, but that could be because of my unfamiliarity with number of gears involved after mostly driving 5 speeds.

 

[GrasB]

My gear choice is delivering optimal stability rather than optimal rpm for the amount of power asked for. I find auto boxes will change in circumstances due to sudden gradient ramps or during settling throttle inputs where the last thing I want is a gear change. Left to their own devices autos tend to change up far to early for maximum vehicle stability. But I’m very picky about these things thanks to my motorsport background when combined with road advanced driver training & am aware that most people driving a manual would make the same gear choice as the auto.

 

[User33236]

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

I have owned three automatic cars. The first was a Japanese car, Honda Insight, which was their hybrid and has a1.3 litre petrol linked to an electric motor and a CVT transmission. I never really got on with it, too little power from the engine and a gearbox that had to rev high to get anywhere.

My last car was an American automatic, a Ford Mustang to be precise. This had a three speed auto with overdrive. Ok the gearbox was paired up to a 4+ litre engine with plenty of torque which made it a great combination. Only minor gripe was no engine breaking in overdrive but it was easy enough to switch this off and back of via a button on the shifter.

My current car in German, a Passat Estate with a 2.0 litre turbo diesel engine and DSG transmission which VW bill as semi-automatic.

I'd never go back to a manual but also I'd never so for a small engine / auto box combination again either.

On long journeys I do sometimes find myself looking for somewhere to position my redundant leg left for comfort but I've never stuck it up on the dash

 

[glasgowcyclist]

I had an automatic for a year after I'd had some surgery and metalwork put in my left foot. I really liked it, especially round town, and yes I could put my achy foot up on the parcel shelf for a bit sometimes without it affecting my driving.

On the parcel shelf? Surely you mean the dashboard! If you really are able to drive with your left foot on the parcel shelf, it paints a picture that is both entertaining and disturbing in equal measure. Maybe you should audition for the circus, or as it's known these days, Britain's Got Talent.

GC

 

[GrasB]

I'd never go back to a manual but also I'd never so for a small engine / auto box combination again either

Auto gear boxes are at their best with diesel engines, which have narrow power bands, and with small engines which struggle for mid-range so need to kept closer to peek power for proper progress. A start looking at modern engines over 1.6l with VVT turbos and they have such a broad torque curve that an auto box is basically an exercise in lowering fuel consumption.

 

[GrasB]

Haha, good point! I meant the little shelf on the passenger side of the front seats. Quite a lot lower than the dashboard actually

Aww you should have pretended you're ultra flexible

 

[AndyRM]

As a wayward Angelino, I frequently drove with one foot resting on the windowsill of my mighty Nissan Sentra, in a similar position the the chap in the bus. Totally controllable, but not advisable.

 

[albion]

I think the women passenger, instead of complaining to the bus company, trying to get the bus driver the sack, should of asked the driver why he had his foot up on the dashboard. Then the women involved would of got an answer. Then taken it further if it warranted it. Too many people are out there trying to cause trouble, thinking they are being clever, where none exists.

My first thoughts too. I've had a word with a bus driver on a similar matter and hope to think I helped everyone out.
Bus driving is one of the toughest jobs going.

 

[PK99]

Only driven an auto once, a couple of years ago our holiday hire car was ungraded to a BMW sport back jobbie with 3 settings for the suspension/gearing:

Normal - as it says on the tin
Comfort - imagine a mattress with a wheel on each corner
Sport - effin fantastic for holding the road round the twisty bends on the Lake Como shoreline road and leaving the car to deal with the zillion gear changes needed on a road like that was so good.

From being suspicious of Automatics, i was an instant convert. Our next car will be one.

 

[Piemaster]

Auto gear boxes are at their best with diesel engines, which have narrow power bands, and with small engines which struggle for mid-range so need to kept closer to peek power for proper progress. A start looking at modern engines over 1.6l with VVT turbos and they have such a broad torque curve that an auto box is basically an exercise in lowering fuel consumption.

Surely this is more of a recent thing though? Diesels and autos seemed be uncommon in days of the 3 speed autos were a wider powerband was needed - hence them tending to be put in larger petrol engine cars. With the advent of more ratios in the boxes and diesels and wider powerbands with common rail engines its a better proposition now.

I'm with @User33236 on DSG boxes, the Skoda probably is a bit weedy for an auto box, but I'd find it weedy no matter what the transmission was. My wife really likes it and it's her car, so she's right. Seems motorsport and high performance cars are all heading the same way too.

 

[TheDoctor]

Based on recent experience, a 1l engine isn't big enough, even in a Micra. And an auto box really isn't the answer. Unless the question is How can I make this even worse?
Driven a variety of autos, hated them all.