It’s not much of a cheese shop is it?
John Cleese’s family name used to be Cheese. His grandfather changed it, IIRC. All the details are in So Anyway . . ., Cleese’s fabulous autobiography.
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Every automatic should have an emergency release that defeats the interlock. Usually they are hidden under a small cover next to the shifter. You pop it off and insert a key or screwdriver to allow you to move the shifter freely.
(ETA looks like somebody else already covered this)
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A bit old of a comment to reply to but I found this interesting because I just got a new car and am finding I have a milder version of this kind of problem with it - because of fancy new technology.
My old car was a 1998 Subaru Impreza, an automatic without cruise control. Up to that car I had always driven manual but it was a hand-me-down (well, as were the others). I drove that car from NY to CA and back - going across 7 times in total - and never felt like I needed cruise control. When you really get in the groove of your car you can rest your foot very comfortably in just the right spot on the accelerator and just let it sit there (until you run out of gas, in some parts of the country), and you can make subtle changes in speed almost instinctively when needed.
The few times I’d tried cruise control in other cars it seemed pointless, because even on those big open drives you do usually have to change your speed quite a lot because of other drivers etc., so I really never missed having it. (As an aside I did once drive somebody else’s manual car that had cruise control, which was an interesting oddity to me.)
But now, my new car has adaptive cruise control. It’s awesome - though you do feel very disconnected from the driving. I use it pretty much any time I go on the freeway - even, or especially, in heavy traffic, because it does all the work for me, keeps a consistent distance from the car ahead (you control the distance if you want), and dramatically improves gas mileage over my regular driving style, which is not even particularly aggressive.
However, here’s where the problem comes in. You can use adaptive cruise control almost all the time - way, way more than you could realistically use old-style cruise control. With regular cruise control, the only times it seems usable are times when you could relatively safely have both feet flat on the floor - not times when quick reactions may be needed.
But you can (and, honestly, should) use adaptive cruise control in times when quick reactions are often needed (e.g. when someone quickly cuts into your lane at a much lower speed). The car will put on the brakes and come to a complete stop by itself if it thinks it will hit something, however, I don’t feel it’s particularly wise to trust that - so realistically you have to awkwardly hover your foot over the brake pedal. You can’t rest it on the pedal, because the amount of force required (for either pedal) is quite small.
I don’t know if this becomes painful for most people or not, but I injured my knee in college (I jumped out of a tree I climbed at the top of a mountain on a field trip - I studied geology) - minor injury, really, but it never really went away. Really the only thing that particularly aggravates it is the positions your legs go in when driving a car (and I never put socks on or tied my shoes the same way again). With my old car I never had an issue (and it’s a small car, not a ton of leg room or anything), and now because of new technology (not that I’m forced to use it), I do sometimes have a problem.
tl;dr - a new technology, adaptive cruise control, causes knee pain because you have to hover your foot over the brake pedal and can’t rest on something solid
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Do you do the “2 pedals 1 foot” thing, or do you have one at the ready for each pedal?
I don’t drive IRL, but in Euro Truck Simulator, I use a wheel and pedals and am loving cruise control because it lets me relax and flex my ankles (which get achey after awhile). I alternate between keeping one foot over each pedal or resting one while the other is over the pedal that I’m most likely to need to hit (usually brake). I don’t know if that’s applicable in the real world.
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Excellent thought - I’ve tried two-footing it in the past (for no particular reason, just to try) and never got past my left foot feeling really awkward and uncoordinated, even though I am used to using it for a clutch (or perhaps that’s the reason why using it on the pedal feels wrong). Like, so uncoordinated that I felt like inevitably I would end up pressing the wrong foot down at the worst possible time.
However, I haven’t tried in the new car, and it may be worth getting used to in order to prevent the knee pain - especially since the car can stop itself (even though I don’t completely trust it) so there’s less worry during the learning process, and because it isn’t actually two-footing it, the right foot would rest on the floor.
I do still think carmakers should come up with a solution to resting the foot as adaptive cruise control becomes more and more common - when I’m on the freeway using it I frequently think about how much better traffic, safety, and e.g. the ability to change lanes when you need to would be if everyone was using it. It’s just a stepping-stone to fully automated cars really but I think it’s far less of a hurdle to get adaptive cruise control as standard than that, and once everyone sees the benefits, it’ll be easier to get to full automation. Of course, the real hurdle there would be getting every asshole driver to actually use it, at least when traffic is heavy, which is a tall order - but having it be comfortable while still being able to react quickly and step on the brakes would go a long way towards everyone using it.
As this is a nostalgia thread, I’ll dutifully note that yes, something major will be lost when everything is self-driving. However, I’ve driven my brother’s Tesla (which has way better technology than my new Subaru) fairly extensively and the hint of the future you get from that is just incredible. I want driving to be fun, but even in small towns now it’s become a chore because of overcrowding. In the future, I want technology to take the chore out of it - but I do still want to be able to be in complete control for those times when it can still be fun. And I want my knee to not hurt.
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As in, “Right Foot does both Brake and Gas”? Of course, how would I clutch? Even in an Automatic, I never brake with the left foot. That would be Wierd
I will say though, Adaptive Cruise is the Bee’s Knees and the Wasp’s Elbows. I worry though that I’ll have a rental one day that doesn’t have adaptive cruise and I’ll nearly rear-end someone when they come into my lane and the car doesn’t automatically back off.
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My car has normal (non-adaptive) cruise control; I found that “hovering” was hard on the knee, so I rest it, with the leg relaxed, on the floor about six inches away from the pedal.
I’ve never had a problem where the extra fraction of a second to hit the brake has caused me any trouble.
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Don’t know where to put this. Shortcuts -> Deaths.
Reminds me of To Engineer is Human, written when cable-stayed bridges were gaining popularity.
https://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:"Henry+Petroski"
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Closest technique I can think of to that would be heel and toe shifting (I never learned how to do that).
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If not that one, my brother had a similar one. with the belt holster for it in college.
He was always the stylish one.
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Heel toe is the best. Most don’t use it on regular roads and driving (as it’s a racing-based technique), but careful useage can ease wear on your clutch…
You can also trail brake with your left foot to modulate weight transfer on corner exits, but that’s best saved for the track.
A vintage demo of some of this:
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Yeah, no.
I’d fuck that up. I’ll stick with what I know.
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I heel-toe all the time- it’s my norm. I’ve been doing it that way for 15 years. Trail baking isn’t something I do a lot, though it’s still somewhat useful in the snow, sometimes.
Some of it depends on the pedal placement in the car- some pedals are clearly set up for this sort of thing, others are clearly not.
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True. My point of reference is my Fnord truck and I don’t think the clutch is anywhere near close enough.
But I’d still leave pieces of my transmission all over the road I’m sure.
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If you’ve got a truck, you can likely “float” when you shift.
It works like this:
- Get the truck rolling in first gear like normal.
- Lift off the throttle, and slip the gear shifter out of first and into neutral (don’t touch the clutch)
- Still not touching the clutch, gently slip the gear shift into second. It should slide in with no trouble at all.
- Get back on the throttle and accelerate.
- Repeat 2-4 for each gear.
Saves all the wear and tear on the clutch. Standard procedure in a big rig, too.
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You kids today, with your pushbutton electric number machines and your Walkmen.
I carried this through university and liked it.
It wasn’t until after graduation that I got one of these.
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My father continued to use his slide rule for engineering calculations well until the 80s when he retired.
He could use a calculator, or the computer at work, but he could get the calculations done faster with the slide rule.
Sadly, I never was patient enough to be taught how to use it effectively.
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My son set up his Sega Genesis in the living room upstairs for me so I can play this:
NOT in hard mode, lol - it’s been a looooong time, but I forgot how fun it is!
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