Are You Really Able To Drive A Manual Transmission Car?

Is it really true that nobody knows how to drive a stick these days? I tend to doubt the "automatic transmission is destroying our ability to drive" gloom-and-doom crowd, but who can say? Time for a totally unscientific poll!

See, my not-really-based-on-reality feeling is that 80% of the American population remains capable of working a car with a manual— I know, these damn kids these days done got spoiled by their internets and slushboxes, but automatics have outnumbered manuals since the mid-1960s, right?

Here's how it works: if you feel comfortable hopping behind the wheel of a car equipped with three pedals and driving without any anxiety about the whole clutch/shifting thing, then you can operate a manual transmission-equipped vehicle. If you can sorta figure it out but keep killing the engine and or grinding the gears, or if you kinda drove a stick that one time after you drank all that Boone's Farm at the drive-in and had to flee the rent-a-cop in a 3-on-the-tree '51 Chevy, then you can't drive a manual-transmission-equipped vehicle. There's no reason to lie, although probably some of you will anyway... and, just to make it more interesting, let's have an age split at 25. OK? Right!

Are you capable of driving a vehicle with a manual transmission?online surveys