Automatic Transmissions for Dummies

Automatic transmission selector lever 

One of the Antisocial Network staffers took the family SUV into the dealer for maintenance one day, and was a little surprised to see his vehicle still waiting to be driven into the shop ten minutes later. When he asked the service writer why, he was told that they were waiting for the tech who knew how to drive a manual transmission to get free. No kidding. There used to be lots of how-to articles for maual trannies out there, but our researcher was pretty surprised when she ran across this slightly different one: "info guru" Bryce Hammons of Catalogs.com (formerly WhoWhatWhyWhere or something like that) decided it was necessary, or more likely profitable, to explain "How to drive an automatic car." And no, he didn't mean a driverless car.

Before we get to the wannabe screenwriter's post, let's talk about the difference between an automatic transmission and a manual: in the simplest terms, an automatic transmission does all the work of gearing down when additional torque is necessary and gearing up when efficiency is the goal. With a manual tranny, the driver selects the gears and therefore must operate both a gear selector and a clutch that disengages the transmission from the engine so he or she can make a change. In other words, a newbie manual driver needs to learn both when to shift and why – hence all the articles about how to drive a stick shift (note to researcher team – check those out for stupidity). What, according to Hammons, does the first-time automatic transmission driver need to know?

Well, how about this interesting factoid:

"For starters, when you step into your vehicle, the pedals for your right foot will consist of the brake and gas. The brake will be larger and to the left. The gas pedal will be to its right, and will be slightly smaller."

That came as a surprise to most of us, since the chief differences between the accelerator and the brake are shape and orientation; not size, Once you've climbed into the car, Bryce has "instructions" for you. His first is "...prepare for obtain a 'learner [sic] permit' or the required preliminary licensing for your state..." Really? The crappy grammar aside, no one needs a "learner permit" to drive a car around the local parking lot. Next, Hammons wants his readers to "Depress the brake and make sure the vehicle is in park. Turn your key in the ignition and with your right foot still depressing the brake, move the shifter down to D, or drive."

We're pretty sure it's not necessary to have you foot on the brake to start the engine. In fact, you very likely want to have your foot on the accelerator! Oh, and shouldn't you wait until the engine actually starts before shifting to drive? We're just sayin', Bryce. And your next instruction?

"Take your foot off the brake and the car, in drive, will begin to move forward, even though you haven't applied any pressure to the gas pedal. Press on the gas -- slowly -- and you will have your first driving experience. "

We polled the drivers in the office, and all of them said that their vehicles wouldn't move, even slowly, when they shifted into Drive; at least not until they released the parking brake... dumbass.
With instructions like that, we were curious about what sort of instructions Bryce would have given to first-time stick-shift drivers, but we couldn't find anything out there. We suspect he didn't know how to drive a stick (although not knowing something never stopped most of our freelancers from writing about it). Whatever the case, we sincerely hope first-time drivers found a better source of information than our Dumbass of the Day and his cute little post.

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