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Jul 18, 2008 - Third Pedal News

My 16 year old got her learner's permit two weeks ago, so I thought I'd report on her progress as we add another lover of manual transmissions to the traffic flow.

Here in Pennsylvania, new drivers have to log 50 hours behind the wheel over 6 months on their permit before they can take the test to get their driver's license. It's a great idea as long as the parents are conscientious about filling in the log. It really lets me set goals for each session behind the wheel and teach the kid what she needs to know.

As you can imagine, we've had our share of stalling the car, especially at those pesky traffic lights on upgrades. My daughter's "reboot" times had improved to where she could restart the engine in a flash and get on her way quickly on the second start attempt.

Yesterday we passed the milestone of zero stalls in about an hour of drving around town with many starts and stops, so I'm almost ready to declare her competent on the clutch and ready to move into more complicated moves like parallel parking once it's clear she's not really thinking about operating the clutch.

Overall she's doing very well and we only had one instance of trying to start up in third gear. To be fair, the throw of the gear shift on the Versa isn't all that big, so to a new driver third and first feel pretty close in position. Then again, there's nothing like the smell of a hot clutch to let you know you've made a mistake!

3:32 am | Categories: driving skills, manual transmission Permalink | Alert Administrator

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