Would you like to buy a 2006 Jeep Commander?
Maybe! Let's see what the next 39 commenters say.
You were. I just need to know if the rest of them say "Anything but a 2006 Jeep Commander" or not.
On the nose thing, I would just say no. But then I said no to things that made my life more difficult just for that reason unless it seemed very important to him.
I'd tie (this is a bad choice of verbs, given the topic) the nose ring to some kind of positive achievement: in this case, buying the older sibling a car.
I can't seem to get C to learn how to drive. He's looking at mostly small colleges in rural areas where driving would seem essential to me.
What do the other two get? Do we pierce everyone's noses together?
Like other piercings, I assume nose ring is reversible? I'd say no to a permanent thing like a tattoo but if they want to experiment with something that doesn't last for life I'd say go for it. Our now 14yo had long hair for a few years and recently decided he wanted to change his look so donated 16 inches (laydeez)
Can't help with car. Our oldest learned to drive on our minivan but hasn't driven since passing his test*. Our next is slowly learning but is in no hurry.
*Partly he doesn't need to since he's at college most of the time, partly doesn't want to even when home because he's nervous about it, partly financial because if he doesn't drive at all we can exclude him from our insurance**
**Can someone tell me if this is a scam? We told our insurance he had a license as required but opted to not put him on our policy (he's 19). They said he couldn't drive our cars at all if we did so, and that if he did drive them we would be fully liable for any accident and he'd be ticketed as an uninsured driver. Then they raised our rates $300/yr anyway (vs $1200/yr increase if we had insured him.) What exactly are we getting for that $300?
I am relieved that Hawaii is interested in driving, since we've seen 7 play out with our friends' kids. It would be fine with #4, but I'm very interested in having a third driver in a year or so.
9.last: Don't know, but they say rates are up regardless.
9 change insurance companies. This is something that should be done routinely every few years anyway as they keep raising the rates every year far above what would be reasonable so a reset is always a good idea. USAA seems to be an exception to this.
Is your 10 year-old athletic? In any case I imagine PE class is mandatory. Reddit folks say it's a bad idea because of that.
12 is true. We finally listened to an agent bugging us with offers for saving money on our car and home insurance and we saved so much money.
The way to save money on your insurance is to total your wife's car instead of your own. At least that worked for me.
9: are you in one of the legacy insurance agencies that folllos the at-fault rules here the state can overrule their determination or one of the ones that are newer to the MA market such as Liberty or GEICO.
12: Our mortgage broker connected us to a fantastic insurance agent. She encouraged us to bundle all of our policies. Our rates for homeowner's insurance are up, but she advised us not to shop around, because loyalty was the only thing keeping people from being dropped. A lot of people in coastal towns that were not "on the water" have been dropped. Too many storms because of climate change.
We get a 5% discount for donating $50 to the Pan Mass challenge (cancer research).
I don't know if this still washes out statistically (I think SUVs roll over less now at least?), but with a big car you have to offset the lower risk given an accident with the higher risk of having accidents at all.
Reading between the lines, is the 2006 Jeep Commander... totaled?
10 is a little young for long-term body modification, I would think - yes, it isn't permanent like a tattoo, but there's a risk of injury if you aren't careful, and younger kids are less likely to be careful. 13 mentioned PE class - also just general small-kid playing around during breaks would be risky.
For those who think 10 is OK - what age would be too young? 8? 5?
I totalled a different Jeep. And also a 1985 Buick Century.
You support piercing at age 5, just not in the child's car hole?
I think ten is fine for a nose piercing. Lots of kids that age and much younger have ear piercings. I can't think of significant differences in terms of care or potential complications between ears and nose. The difference is that one is culturally very common for young kids and the other less so. So I guess the question is how much adhering to cultural norms matters to you.
I would have them use their own money for this (or work to earn it) and take them to a reputable piercing shop but, other than that, I would allow it if my own kid wanted to.
My grandmother would pierce ears with a needle, some ice, and an apple. Then eat the apple. But probably don't eat an apple that has been in a nose.
Maybe a carrot fits more readily in a nose.
To the good questions above:
- They'll have to do PE in middle school, but they hate sports and will opt for dance, which counts for a PE credit.
- They already have double piercings in each ear, and they've been responsible about taking care of them.
- Claire's is still a thing, for sure.
I think I realized why I'm unsure: I've had conversations with parents of 5th graders who are super nervous about middle school, and I'm imagining one of those students coming home on the first day of 6th grade and saying, "The kid next to me has a nose ring!" and the poor parent getting the vapors.
Our version of that was both Hawaii and Pokey coming home and saying, "the kids say the N-word SO MUCH!!" which was just a big shock to them because I don't think they knew that people actually use that word all the time.
Jammies and I weren't particularly fazed, but I'm sympathetic that parents are sometimes getting used to a lot when their oldest goes to middle school.
Oh, the other one (IASIMTHB) was Pokey coming home on the first day of 6th grade and saying, "What's a hub?"
Jammies answered about wheels and airports.
Pokey goes, "No, what's a ...porn hub?"
I don't know if this still washes out statistically (I think SUVs roll over less now at least?), but with a big car you have to offset the lower risk given an accident with the higher risk of having accidents at all.
Is this an actual risk due to the car, or is it selection bias on the drivers that pick big cars?
I'm not so worried about an accident occurring so much as an accident occurring on the interstate. That terrifies me.
Maybe Texas can pull out of the federal highway system the way it pulled out of the national power grid?
28L I think the bigger cars may also handle worse in general. Plus visibility issues.
28: used to be SUV's were much more dangerous because 1) most accidents are single-car accidents, and 2) rollovers were more common in high ground clearance vehicles so the fact that in a two car collision you'd hurt the occupants of the Civic a lot didn't mean you were safer. You weren't. Past tense because that's old info and newer large vehicles are probably less likely to roll over. But small vehicles are very safe! Airbags are great! Don't buy a big car for safety, buy one that's affordable to drive, because having extra cars is a big expense. We were a four car family (one for each kid, one for each adult) because it was THAT important to have the kids take themselves to school and lower the driving load on the parents. It worked. We sold one of them now that one kid is off at a more distant school and would not use a car.
29, yeah, that's the danger. High speed accident. Luckily, though interstate driving is high-consequence, it's usually the easiest kind of driving. Get them lots of practice on slower more complex roads first. It's amazing how long they can be driving and still be really bad from lack of experience. Get them a job delivering pizzas.
31.last: Jeeps have a very poorly positioned windshield with too wide of a frame between it and the driver's side window. At least that's my option.
But small vehicles are very safe! Airbags are great!
I have a fear - maybe outdated? - that when they do crash test ratings, they only test within a weight class, and not between a big car and a little car. And so little cars are great within their class, but not necessarily in an actual wreck.
"We were a four car family"
Reading that phrase gave me a panic attack just imagining that many vehicles to manage. We recently became a two car family because the one big car was being driven around empty since kids go to their own things now mostly by biking or public transit. We drive the tiny electric daily and the minivan only every week or two, right now it needs an oil change and I don't want to deal with it. At one point I had to think about whether the gas in the tank was getting too old. Coordinating repairs maintenance payments insurance etc on four cars sounds like a part time job.
Oh yeah? well your job sounds like a part time job too.
They already have double piercings in each ear, and they've been responsible about taking care of them.
This would allay most of my concerns, although I would still worry (without any knowledge of such matters) that a nose piercing would be harder to heal or be more prone to infection, because there's more moisture, plus kids get colds/runny noses so much.
When I was in high school my parents wouldn't let me get a double piercing so I did it myself with a needle and an ice cube (I think I got the idea from a Paula Danziger or maybe Judy Blume book), but my earlobe was thicker than I had expected and I paused midway, so the piercing was very crooked and really hard to get an earring post through. (You know when your hoodie cord gets pulled all the way out, and you have to thread it back through the tunnel and it takes forever? Like that, except the tunnel is your flesh, and it's all irritated and inflamed.)
You need to use the apple as a base to push into.
No, no, you're thinking of how you improvise a pipe when all you have is an apple and you need to smoke weed.
I was trying to figure out the apple. I thought maybe apple slices stop the bleeding but using it as a base makes more sense.
If you tried to push a needle through your earlobe without something behind it, it would be like trying to rethread the cord of a hoodie.
Just put the nose of someone getting that pierced behind the ear of someone else getting that pierced and you can be more efficient.
I stopped going to a podiatrist because she used a Dremel on my feet without seeming to sterilize the cutting head.
My rule with my kids was no body modifications beyond a single lobe piercing until 18, and then do what you like. Sally now has a whole bunch of interesting tattoos and piercings.
My thinking was that I exactly didn't want to be trying to figure out what's reasonable for a kid to do to their body (piercings? tattoos? Where exactly should the lines be?), and ornamental body modifications aren't urgent, so they can wait for adulthood. While I was the kids' legal guardian, I was going to maintain a minimum of scarring to preserve their options for when they could exercise adult judgment.
Also, Heebie, you're a math person. Look up some stats on deaths or injuries per however many miles travelled in small cars as opposed to Chevy Behemoths, and also check out pedestrian injuries caused by both -- you have to figure that crushing a toddler to death is also a significantly life-ruining event for your driving kid.
And then after you've looked at the stats, see if you really think your kid needs to be in a GMC Terminator.
re: 35
That's not how they test them. If a small car tests well, it tests well against the same standardised sleds and impact protocols as bigger cars.
https://www.iihs.org/ratings/about-our-tests#overview
They planted a bunch of brushy things where the kids were sledding on a hill thar was close to a street at the bottom.
For example, on the EuroNCAP tests, my 12 year old Suzuki Swift outscores a Jeep Grand Cherokee from the same year, on the same test, with higher ratings for driver, passenger and child occupant safety and much higher ratings for pedestrian safety.
Crushing a toddler only partway to death would also suck, because of all the screaming.
When I saw that teen get hit crossing the street and he was bleeding from the head, that was awful. Maybe this explains 7. He was there and saw it. (I wasn't the driver who hit the kid. It was a guy in a Range Rover. )
FWIW, I wasn't literally picturing getting the biggest behemoth on the road. But I wasn't picturing getting the smallest either. There's gotta be something in between.
What about, like, a 1987 Volkswagen Cabriolet with a rag top?
From the link in 50:
Frontal crash test results can't be used to compare vehicle performance across weight classes. That's because the kinetic energy involved in the moderate overlap and small overlap front tests depends on the speed and weight of the test vehicle. Thus, the crash is more severe for heavier vehicles. Given equivalent frontal ratings, the heavier of two vehicles usually offers better protection in real-world crashes.
re: 57
I get what that's saying, in the sense that the larger vehicle with equivalent crash rating can absorb more kinetic energy. But in a lot of real world crash scenarios it's going to be imparting a lot more kinetic energy, too. So I wonder how well that generalisation holds? In the side impact crashes, for example, it's the same weight of sled that's hitting the cars, so in that case, it is measuring like for like.
If I was hitting a truck head on, I guess I'd prefer a bigger vehicle over a smaller one, too. But in most real world driving scenarios, a moderately sized car is a good safe choice.
Consider the Mazda 3 hatchback. 4 doors, back seat's tight if the passengers are tall but OK for others, folds down so you can haul furniture or bulky stuff. Mazda engine reliability is fantastic, price for a few-year-old one was better than other reliable roughly equivalent cars. I drive an 06, a few times a week, getting another 5 years out of it seems pretty feasible. Good visibility and handling.
re the nose piercing - noses are different from the portion of the ear where people get piercings. noses are a) a common site of bacterial colonization, and b) provide a highway for infections to travel to important body systems (respiratory, brain). neither is true of the outer ear parts. on that basis i'd nix a nose piercing for a 10 yr old & likely take lb's position - wait until you're 18.
It looks like weight matters less than it used to. It's pretty dramatic in the 1983-86 cars, and then gets better in the 2000s. Having a newer car definitely seems to trump having a bigger old car, so that's good.
More data here. I'm not saying these differences are important enough to necessarily drive all decisions, but smaller cars do have higher death rates.
60 is a very good point. Noses are on the wrong side of the brain's blood barrier.
Seems like the right side to me.
Re: piercings, Claire's still exists but I can't recommend them. We got the kid's ears pierced over Christmas (she's 8) and thought earrings could be changed after three weeks, based on the discussion with the clerk, but when we tried there were a lot of tears and screaming and we did more research and it seems it should be more like six weeks. So she now only has one ear pierced until we can get the other one redone. Maybe we should have done our research better, but then again, maybe we should have gone somewhere better than a mall Claire's.
Re: driving, I feel like it'll totally be an urban vs. rural thing. Or rather, walkable vs. not-walkable, since America has so many not-walkable cities. Driving as soon as possible was essential when I was a teen, in a small Vermont town, but would be both scarier and a lot less necessary for Atossa, here in DC.
63: The neti pot amoeba thing really gave me the creeps.
So, you shouldn't let your kids put swamp water up their nose until they turn 18.
Claire's does suck, but on the 5 kid piercing trips I've gone on, either my sprog or the friend wouldn't agree to a tattoo/piercing shop downtown, and so we ended up at Claire's.
The most recent piercer was great, I acknowledge.
One time we had one of my former students, who had graduated, which was kinda depressing.
I wouldn't do a nose piercing at ten. It's a decent amount of work to keep it clean and uninfected -- the problems tend not to be serious but probably a lot for a ten year old to manage. It's not permanent, exactly, but it will leave a small pock mark.
As for a car, something cheap and reliable because you have to insure that thing.
Having not yet read the comments, my arbitrary parent rule would be "no body-piercing, apart from ears, until age 16."
Noses are on the wrong side of the brain's blood barrier.
I'm pretty sure this isn't the case. Your nose isn't part of your central nervous system, and it has blood in it. N. fowleri is able to penetrate the blood-brain barrier, but it's still there.
It is, however, true that an infection in the nose or upper lip is more worrying because it's easier for it to spread to the thinky bits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_triangle_of_the_face
I guess I can go back to snorting pond water?
psa- brora is having a decent sale for those looking to invest in e.g. decent knitwear or ime a jacket in harris tweed (altho watch out for murky pond-esque color ways if that is not your jam).
Maybe now that I have a beard, I can finally pull off tweed.
re 76 & prior - don't underestimate the bacterial reservoir in your/your kids' nose. it doesn't take an exotic amoeba, a simple everyday ubiquitous staph microbe is absolutely up to the task of a major infection that in this part if your body can go v bad v fast.
Att. (esp.) Doug:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/02/27/nagorno-karabakh-azerbaijan-armenia-environment-climate/
Our rule re piercings etc was LB's in 48 above.... age 18 was convenient. Cars...each kid learned to drive on our well-used Honda Pilot (automatic transmission) and soon after that learned to drive our Civic (standard shift). As the cars got older we kept them longer than usual and added another small one. When the kids moved out they each took a used car with them.
Our rule re piercings etc was LB's in 48 above.... age 18 was convenient. Cars...each kid learned to drive on our well-used Honda Pilot (automatic transmission) and soon after that learned to drive our Civic (standard shift). As the cars got older we kept them longer than usual and added another small one. When the kids moved out they each took a used car with them.
81: ooh, thank you! Apparently I haven't exhausted my free articles on FP for whatever the current time period is.
Good article, on the whole. I think. She makes clear that she's only showing what Baku wants her to write about, presumably figuring that it's better than nothing. Attentive readers -- probably (hopefully?) the only kind who are reading about N-K in FP -- will also note that she's careful not to add credence to Baku's claims that the Lachin blockade was a grassroots action.
The bits about water and dams were new to me. It's not surprising that there were quarries and mines with slack environmental standards; N-K was poor and corrupt. I'd be surprised if high environmental standards are met throughout Azerbaijan.
I kinda wish she had asked the guy from the framing narrative why he was fighting friends in 1993.
Thanks for sending the link!
I had assumed the mining abuses story for the Lachin blockade was just bull, but I guess not entirely. The scorching of the lowlands I didn't know about.
59: I will have a kid buying a car this summer, and I expect to push for the Mazda 3. IIHS and Consumer Reports like it. And (in my unscientific view) it's easier to avoid an accident in a smaller car.
it doesn't take an exotic amoeba, a simple everyday ubiquitous staph microbe is absolutely up to the task of a major infection
This is just so supportive and empowering to hear for all those simple everyday staph microbes out there. You go, guys! We have faith in you!
Mazda 3 hatchback is our third car! Stickshift, so both kids learned to drive a stick. Pretty sporty, but I don't drive it because I'm 6'3" and it has a moonroof (which cuts headroom by a lot). It really is good for hauling big things, as mentioned above. My in-laws have a Mazda 3 and a Crown Vic and if there's something big that needs moving, they use the Mazda.
Someone mentioned that maintaining 4 cars sounded like a nightmare, but they were reliable brands so it wasn't bad. Part of the deal with our buying and insuring cars for teens was them chipping in with maintenance on any car that needed it (worked especially well with the older boy, who is more handy). So he replaced an alternator on one car, an air conditioner on another. I felt it was a good life lesson - quote from the shop is $650 and you did it in two hours for $90 in parts? Hmmmm. Anybody can follow a YouTube video; I have serviceable tools and he got some tools for Xmas one year. Also when they had income they were responsible for a small part of expenses, $50 a month.
I didn't even know you could replace an air conditioner without a large investment in tools to deal with the refrigerant. I tried to change my own oil once and spilled a bunch of oil, so my dad didn't let me do my own oil changes after that. I've found I can save money by just not changing my oil very often.
In my area, reputable piercers aren't willing to work on children, so I'd wait for that reason alone. If it's going to be done I want it done my someone good.
In my area, reputable piercers aren't willing to work on children, so I'd wait for that reason alone. If it's going to be done I want it done my someone good.
I let Nia get her nose pierced when she was 16 even though I knew she wouldn't be particularly responsible about it. She ended up removing the ring and the hole closed at some point. She wants me to pay to have it redone but since she's not living with me and is technically in state custody, I'm not going to do that and I doubt the caseworker will bother. Mara got her first ear piercing at 16 because the local piercing parlor won't do anything at all before that age. They'll get a second lobe piercing soon. I'd be fine with allowing a nose piercing but have so far forbidden an eyebrow ring because they have no proprioception and scar weirdly and that seems like a recipe for getting a ring ripped out and left looking weird.
Other kids in sixth grade with Selah have pierced noses, I'm assuming done by family. I hate it in the way that I hate that other kids are allowed to wear fake eyelashes and so I have to weigh in on that. I allow fake nails sometimes though and let Selah get long extension braids before Christmas, so I also know I'm part of the problem.
Hawaii is really into fake lashes. I have no comment, except that they're actually required for performances by the dance team she's on.
I don't think I've known a woman or girl who wore fake lashes.
89: my brother. I was set to joke about stick (mine also) as theft deterrence, but that may be more true in cities than in wilds of TX. Also at least in 2006, stick is 10% better gas mileage than auto-- probably no longer true, I haven't checked newer ones.
95: very much a Utah thing, although it varies by zip code.
Because of post office regulations.
Mobes, I've seen them on Black women in Pittsburgh and I haven't been there in 6+ years, so either things have changed stylewise or you just aren't noticing them on cashiers or people on the bus or whatever. As others say, it's partly a socioeconomic style though when I was in line at the pharmacy yesterday I was able to complain a bit about them with three other moms, two white and wealthier. One had a daughter (present) who would prefer to get her eyelashes permed but would settle for fake lashes and her mom laughed at her on both counts while we all backed the mom up.
I've definitely seen lashes on women while going around. Just not the women I know. Who are mostly white women, but not all.
Now that I think of it, my one cousin's daughter (probably 30 years old or so) was wearing them when I saw her this summer. She teaches some combination of cheerleading and dance.
Fake lashes and very elaborately polished make-up with loads of contouring is very very common in London across all ethnic groups. I presume it's an influencer derived thing. It's not just lower socioeconomic status girls, either.
Some of the young women who train at my son's athletics club turn up in very polished make-up and fake lashes, and then proceed to hammer out 200m and 400m intervals at a ferocious rate.
I have a lot of shame about being unable to drive a stick -- technically I learned on one, but forgot the skills and only really started logging hours driving an automatic. I'm sure I could re-learn now if I try, assuming I can overcome the shame.
Oh are we talking about who can drive a stick? Are you all just trying to elicit my smarmy twattiness again? [bats regular eyelashes and pretends to shift gears]
It is a sadnesses in my life that I was unable to talk my wife into driving a stick, and am therefore myself limited to automatics. I was impressed when my 21-year-old son advised me that several of his friends can drive a stick.
I almost forgot that I did once know how to drive a stick. I would drive my brother's Datsun, that he gave to my mother and she gave to me. That was about 35 years ago. I wonder if I would have any muscle memory if I tried to drive a stick now. I'm thinking no.
Just buy an electric car and you don't need to worry about it
109: I had a 20-year period where I didn't drive a stick, and a friend of mine recently needed his standard transmission car moved. I stalled once, but got the hang of it again pretty quickly.
I won't own a car which is not a standard transmission
He really was the best actor in Men in Tights.
Driving stick isn't that hard, surely? It's one of those 80/20 things, isn't it? There's stuff that an experienced driver would do* that someone not used to driving stick wouldn't do, but the basics of matching gear to speed isn't difficult.
That said, I find a lot of automatic transmissions really frustrating or confusing.
* engine braking, skip shifting, all the million little things people do with clutch and revs to corner more smoothly, shifting down in anticipation of some situation where you might want more agility, etc. I'm talking here a out normal everyday use of manual shifting by experienced drivers, not some fancy-pants wannabe racing drivers.
aibihmhb, i learned to drive on a variety of heavily modified, hippie dad-maintained vws, in a hilly town. transmissions like soup, flukey "turbochargers," the works. haven't regularly driven a stick in years, but those skills are engraved on my lizard brain. can drive pretty much anything.
I had access to my brother's car for maybe 6-12 months, and while I could drive the stick, I never got very comfortable with it - never took it to hilly areas, for example. That said, I didn't use it every day or even every week. And it wasn't a very good car (I think a 2000s Ford Focus).
115.2 is kind of hilarious. What's confusing about an automatic?
Re: 118
I drove one in the US where I couldn't work out if it was truly terrible or I had somehow stuck it in some mysterious 'intermittently rev too high and deliver no power' mode. At the time I thought it was just terrible, but I drove a modern automatic in Malta a few years back where if you pushed the shifter sideways it went into some quasi-manual mode but only for some restricted use case and it was quite easy to do by mistake.
I get the impression that people used to manuals (I refuse to call them "standard", they are not in this country) want to do these more sophisticated things and are discombobulated when they can't? But it should be easy to get used to.
Re: 120
Yes, drives me crazy.
A stick in heavy traffic in a hilly city is just the worst. Especially if it's a Dodge Neon.
Some of the young women who train at my son's athletics club turn up in very polished make-up and fake lashes, and then proceed to hammer out 200m and 400m intervals at a ferocious rate.
I wonder if they're influenced by the styles of some of the elite, Olympic-level sprinters.
I learned to drive a stick on a car where I was worried about accidentally starting in reverse because it was a little too easy (in my inexperienced view) to accidentally shift to reverse when getting out of park. I don't remember the exact layout of the shift, but I think pulling too far when getting out of park could take you past 1st into R. Sadly, I over-corrected and kept trying to start in 3rd, which kind of worked but not smoothly. I started to get the hang of starting correctly just as my parents decided to get rid of that car. So I've pretty much always driven automatic.
I've done a lot of hill and mountain driving and even in an automatic I'll manually set the car to use lower gears for certain kinds of downhills. I don't manually shift on uphills. My current car has "paddle" shifters that let me change the gear* temporarily and hold it there as long as the car stays within that gear's range, so it's great for holding speed on downhills with sometimes no braking needed at all. It's a bit hard to describe how it works. The car will still automatically shift up or down in this mode, but it sticks with the current gear for longer than in normal automatic mode. It took some time to get used to it. My old automatic let you shift down to 1st/2nd/3rd but it would hold that until you shifted back to automatic drive.
*I don't quite understand the difference between "traditional" automatic and CVT transmissions. My car has a CVT and might just be faking gears, or faking shifting, or both. But there are numerical representations from 1-6 that represent the concept of gears.
Baby kicking itself in the face. Stupid baby.
105 also true up here, for all ethnic groups (inasmuch as we have them) except, noticeably, East Asian women.
OT: The creature in "Predator" is clearly intended to be female. It has long braided hair, it wears fishnet tights, it has a necklace and bracelets, and every time it achieves something really impressive at work all the men assume a man must have done it.
She's always referred to as "it" in dialogue, because none of the human characters know that she's female - or indeed what she is.
The only character to give her credit for her work is Anna, the only other female character in the film - this is a deliberate decision by the scriptwriters!
Parallel parking a right-hand drive rental car with a manual transmission. On a narrow road on a hill, because why not click all the challenge boxes at once. Cyprus was worth it, though.
I think the U.N. would have stopped you if you tried to take the whole island.
Túrin had it hard and all, but at least when his black rages came upon him he got to kill some dudes.
124 No manual I've ever driven has "Park."
I've been driving automatic for the last 4 years, but stick more often than not for the 45 years before that. Rented a car in the Netherlands earlier this month, and was surprised how out of practice I was. The rental clerk was surprised I didn't upgrade to get an automatic.
I've never seen park on a manual either, but I haven't driven one manufactured in this century.
In 1990, I bought a 1980 Audi with a manual 5 speed for $2,000. My dad gave me a 15 minute lesson on how to drive it and then left town. That reverse stopped working after 3 years was probably unrelated.
I traded it in for $600, so I think that's a win.
Especially considering, as I infer, that you had totaled it.
I've never totalled my own car. And only two cars belonging to other people. And the one car that I hit was probably totalled.
134: I see what you did there.
I don't even grasp the concept of automatic. You just drive the car until the engine starts tearing itself apart/the car starts moving in the wrong direction, and then the car changes gears? Or you drive until etc, then press a widget, and it changes gears? It's just incomprehensible to me. Like letting your 3 y.o. represent you in court or something.
142: It uses AI to imagine a little 6 fingered homunculus in there shifting the gears when appropriate. Cousin to the little folks in the TV.
It just knows when you want to reverse.
re: 142
Heh. The basic idea is that the car has gear level positions for: DRIVE, REVERSE, PARK, NEUTRAL. The car chooses the right gear (when in DRIVE) either by shifting between a fixed set of gears (like a manual) or by a transmission that continuously varies the gear ratio depending on demand.
But a lot of automatics have some additional manually selected gears, e.g. for climbing a hill, or for engine braking on a long descent, and they might even have a quasi-manual shifting mode that you can get into in some way where you can choose gear, but there's no clutch. For me, because there's a variety of different "quasi-manual" options, and I almost never drive automatic, that's the bit where I get confused the first hour or two I'm in the car.
When I rented a car in Malta a couple of years ago, I put in the special request for a manual (they had an option in the web form), and confirmed it by email. I turned up and they only had an automatic and they were insistent I take it because "it's easier" and "everyone drives automatic".
At least the automatic transmission, once I'd worked out the quasi-manual "gate" at one side, where you could manually rock the gears up and down, was decent, as it was a modern Toyota.
130: Wouldn't have fit in the overhead compartment anyway.
We are considering getting an electric but the Selkie is wary of them because, of course, they don't have gears - they don't need them - and she really dislikes automatics.
Does if you squeeze.
I'm looking for a second car for our family and my wife wants one that is purple and has a stick shift. There are very few models that still have a stick, and basically the Honda Civic hatchback is the only viable option based on our other needs. And if I get the highest trim model, it has options for both purple paint, and for a manual transmission. But you can't get the manual AND the purple paint. If you want purple, it has to have a CVT, and if you want a manual, it has to be blue, white, or grey.
My history of cars:
- Age 15: Got learner's permit (Texas, baby)
- Ages 17-18: Drove parents' Volvo 240 (1988 model? 1992? something like that, boxy) to high school every day, senior year - automatic if with some gears I never used that I think were for snow
- 18-33: Car-free
- 33-34: Occasionally used brother's car, and kept it in my apartment's garage for him; it was manual & also bad
- 34-present: 2016 Hyundai Accent, manual, which I plan to drive into the ground for climate reasons
Being made entirely of charcoal, a Hyundai once buried sequesters its carbon indefintely.
I think I can drive a stick shift, but it's been at least 5 years since I've tried and the last one was either a rental or just moving a friend's car around the block, so I'd probably be bad at it.
Driving stick isn't that hard, surely?
I feel like starting one on even the slightest slope is objectively hard, if that means anything at all. So it's no problem if you live in Kansas, I guess, but anywhere with hills, in addition to executing the maneuver in the moment, you'd have to pay a lot more attention to where and how you park, worry about someone boxing you in tightly if it's a parallel parking space, think harder about stop lights and stop signs...
Even aside from starting on a slope, simply changing speeds while moving seems inherently awkward. You've got to put your left foot down, your right foot up, and move the gear shift, all at basically the same time, and if you get it out of sync the engine jolts and makes a horrible grinding noise like it's going to jump out of the hood. Not exactly hard once you've mastered the move-three-appendages-in-different-directions-at-once thing, but requires more attention than driving an automatic.
In fairness, I can think of situations where automatics are harder to drive than manuals, it's just that they're all much rarer than the reverse. When moving on a steep hill, I guess a manual is a little better, but as soon as I try to start on even a slight hill it's a lot worse. I guess I might want an automatic if I had to drive regularly in heavy snow or similar conditions, because of getting stuck in the snow, but that's it.
My car history:
1998-2008: I don't remember the details, but had two or three cheap cars suitable for a teen/twenty-something in Vermont. Probably at least one had a manual transmission.
2008-2020: Nothing. The occasional rental, usually automatic but maybe not always.
2020-present: 2015 Toyota Prius, because city life during covid was even worse without a car, and we've had it since. I have mixed feelings about how much we use it. Automatic transmission.
I've owned a 1980 Audi from 1990 to 1993, a Dodge Ram 50 from 1993 until 1998, a Dodge Neon from 1998 to 2006, and a Jeep Commander since then. In short, don't take advice from me about cars.
Sadly, because their cars more often have numbers/letters instead of names, Europeans cannot play the anal game on road trips.
150: buy the manual plus a few cans of touch-up paint and some tape and sheeting?
I feel like starting one on even the slightest slope is objectively hard,
A lot of modern ones tend to have an automatic handbrake. Without that, yes, hill starts are a bit tricky (they're one of the proverbially dreaded bits of the UK driving test, along with memorising your stopping distances and parallel parking).
156: there are some promising options among UK marques. The Land Rover Defender, the Hillman Ambassador, the Austin Maestro, the Hillman Imp, the Ford Focus, the Triumph Spitfire and the Ford Prefect all come to mind.
I still can't parallel park. I don't think it was on the test. My town had angle parking mostly.
Had to relearn to drive manual for my UK test. (Turns out, it goes more smoothly being taught by a professional if grumpy Scot* than by my father. Also being in my thirties helped.) The little button handbrakes on newer cars make it not too bad (not sure if this is exactly what ajay is talking about). It's a real pain if you're dealing with a big lever handbrake. Parallel parking a manual is complex, but people tend to give more leeway to drivers having trouble here.
* who supposedly was born north of the border, raised in Corby and somehow acquired an English accent, which made him bitter over the Corbyites who weren't true Scotsmen but had the accent.
I mean, I can parallel park just fine unless there are cars both in front of and behind where I'm trying to park.
150. You can type the words "custom auto paint" into your browser?
https://preview.redd.it/delray-winchester-custom-low-rider-inspired-by-counts-v0-iwlimqals3ib1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=3c512bf15c2a8763aa3ff78259ce50d9247003dc
150 is funny.
I do not know how to drive stick (and don't drive much at all).
105: it's the TikTok Instagram set here, too. So much makeup and fake lashes.
161 yes exactly, the handbrakes that come off automatically when you move off.
124 No manual I've ever driven has "Park."
Obviously I don't remember what it was labeled but it was whatever wasn't reverse or a numbered gear. Neutral? It's been almost 30 years.
Yes, the norm for me is five gears plus R arranged radially around N.
Parallel parking a manual is complex, but people tend to give more leeway to drivers having trouble here.
Have I mentioned the time that my dad was maybe 19, home from college with a car in NYC, and spent the summer parking in spots that were too small for anyone else? According to him, he put the car in first, drove until he was touching the front car, and then slowly pushed it forward. Then he'd do the same with the car behind him, until the spot was big enough to fit.
I have lots of questions - did he burn out his clutch in one summer? did everyone leave their car in neutral without the parking break on? - but I also like the story on its own terms.
That's a great story whether or not it's true.
I feel like there's a catch-22 there. How did he get in that bumper-to-bumper position if the cars were so close together to need that push to begin with? Was he pushing them at an angle?
If he pushed them to a high rate of speed, some significant fraction of the speed of light, the cars would become shorter.
There are several reasons the story is unlikely to be true, but it's still great.
Yes, the norm for me is five gears plus R arranged radially around N.
Ok, an image search for 1990s shift patterns is suggesting that there probably wasn't an N at all on the car I was using. And I can see many examples of a pattern where "far left + forward" is R and "left but one stop short of far left + forward" is 1st, and I think that was what was leading me to over correct by not going far enough left for 1st. As I say, I eventually figured it out but then I promptly never drove manual again.
I can't say I care that much about transmission style, which in the US means it's much easier to just default into automatic. I've also only driven one car where I was the purchaser. I got a hand-me-down* in 2004 that I drove until 2018. I barely drove at all before 2003, despite having a license since the last 90s.
*Appropriately enough, an automatic version of a car that my parents had to replace with a manual transmission because they needed to be able to tow a car behind an RV, and you would have to put the automatic version on a trailer for that.
I was just looking for Jake Elwood's parallel parking in The Blues Brother which greatly impressed my friends and I that were preparing to be tested on parallel parking.
But that was super-short and didn't do much for me, now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHcOZpAIQ0Q
On the other hand, the chase scene through the mall is a fascinating trip through time to the malls of the late 70s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIdGxR-aU6o
149: Why don't you just stay with me for a while?
Most manual cars have an extra step to go through to select reverse. It isn't just far left and forward, it's far left and push down and forward, or far left and pull up the gear lever collar and forward. To stop you going into reverse by accident.
175: Here's the story of the mall smashed to bits in the chase scene. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2316114/The-story-25m-shopping-mall-trashed-Blues-Brothers-epic-police-chase-just-torn-30-years.html
More or less exactly what I would have thought.
there probably wasn't an N at all on the car I was using
As I've disclosed I have very limited manual experience, but how does this work? How do you, uh, stop?
179: Such ignorance! Have you never watched The Flintstones?
As I've disclosed I have very limited manual experience, but how does this work? How do you, uh, stop?
I think he just means that N wasn't labeled on the stick. There would have to be a neutral position physically separating the gears. You can stop in gear, though.
You have to disengage the clutch or it'll stall, of course. But you don't have to move the stick to neutral.
If you get the car moving, you can put it in gear and let out the clutch to start the engine.
We just passed a horse-drawn buggy.
169 triggers a memory I have of visiting my aunt in Korea when I was younger. Parking lots were always packed full, but everyone left their parking brakes off, so you could push other people's cars around to make room for your own car to enter and exit the facility. Like a sliding tile game, but with cars. We did this at the garage at her villa, but I'm 95% sure it happened in other parking lots and garages as well. But I haven't seen this in recent years, and when I've asked about it, no one knows what I'm talking about. And my aunt is gone now, so she can't back me up.
As you might expect, my car story is ridiculous. * denotes vehicles used primarily by my wife. # denotes vehicles owned in Germany.
1964 Dodge pickup
1974 VW Beetle
#1972 VW Type III Sedan
1972 VW Super Beetle
*1973 VW Squareback
*#1965 VW Beetle (6 volt!)
*1985 Buick Skylark -- automatic
1976 BMW 2002 (owned very briefly)
1983 Mazda wagon (owned briefly)
1974 BMW 2002
1990(?) Ford Escort
*1994 Volvo 240 Wagon -- automatic
2000 VW Passat
*1998 Jeep Cherokee -- automatic
*2014 Subaru Forester -- automatic
2016 VW Passat (leased) -- automatic
2020 Subaru Outback -- automatic
The Buick was a Skyhawk, not a Skylark. A hand-me-down from my parents, when we had their first grandchild.
I think he just means that N wasn't labeled on the stick.
Yes, I was surprised to see this in the image search, but there are many examples for "1990 shift pattern" or similar searches where there's no visible N. I think it must be implied as the middle position.
Most manual cars have an extra step to go through to select reverse.
I think this car might have had that too, but it was already 10+ years old in the late 90s and may not have had the safety features newer cars have. What I remember is that when I actually went into reverse intentionally as part of learning, it was clear that reverse was noticeably distinct from 1st in terms of the motion to shift into it, and there was no real need to worry about. But I didn't start my lessons by going into reverse.
*For whatever reason, there's always at least one mostly empty lot in these places.
Central Pennsylvania has issues, like who still has a Trump/Pence sign up, but I just had the best $18 steak I've had in this century.
1978 park avenue buick
1992 volvo 850
2006 honda minivan
2022 toyota minivan
Much like listing the number of different places I've lived: I guess I don't change often.
Before I actually owned a car:
A Ford Taurus that I drove one summer in the mid-90s (my parents' car)
A Toyota Camry that I guess I drove for a few months in 2003 or 2004 (my sister's, then my uncle's after me)
Cars I've owned:
2002 Subaru Forester
2018 Subaru Crosstrek
Isn't "what was your first car" a common security question? Thanks everyone!
re: 195
Yeah, although it's not one I ever personally use. For most of these security questions I lie.
The first cars I drove were pretty ridiculous. When I was 17 I worked for a small computer consultancy, and the guys that owned it were rally enthusiasts, so two of the three of them drove Lancia Deltas in rally or near rally spec. HF Turbo Integrale with engine mods, and a GTie (which was the rear wheel drive only version of the HF) with similar engine mods. I didn't have a company car, but they paid for me to sit my driving test, and when I had to visit clients, I'd borrow one of the Lancias.
They were incredibly fast cars for an 18 year old to be driving.
I didn't actually own any cars until I was in my late 20s, though. When I had:
Rover 820/830 in racing green: the big "ministerial" spec rover that you'd see Douglas Hurd and the like being chauffeured in. It was quick and very quiet inside. Big engine. Mine was a piece of shit that I bought for £25 and which got stolen once while I had it. In the 2 years I had it, it never needed any servicing, other than me repairing the damage from the theft. Still the car I have the most affection for.
VW Polo saloon: horrible car. On paper it had a fairly big engine for the weight of car, and decent specs, but it was a dog. I spent a fortune on servicing over the 2 years I had it. The brakes, hydraulics, clutch, front suspension and a ton of other stuff went wrong with it.
Peugeot 205: needed a lot of servicing, but I did 100,000 miles in it, and it was amazing in bad weather. I drove it in snowy conditions and through floods where people in 4x4 SUVs and big German saloon cars were totally stuck and I just cruised past them.
Suzuki Swift: I've had this for 10 years. It has never needed any servicing (and now I'll jinx it) other than replacing worn out tires and the usual oil changes, etc. Super reliable. Surprisingly roomy inside for the front passenger and driver, but tiny boot/trunk. Lots of premium features for a small car from 2011: traction control, stability control, ABS, etc. Quick between 0-40mph ish, so very good for urban driving.
My dad had a Swift. I wonder if it was the same car? It was great fun to drive in town and uncomfortable for long trips. He gave it to my brother after he (dad) had s stroke and couldn't work the clutch.
re: 197
I think there's been three or four generations of them, so if it was from about 2009 - 2017, same car, I'd expect. Mine is fine on long trips as a driver, in term of seat comfort, etc. but it's noisy at motorway speeds (65-70+), yeah, which can get a bit wearing after a few hours.
Probably from 1994 or so. It was also sold in the US as the Geo Metro. It was great fun in a light snow. The front wheels kept traction and it could keep going easily until you got to like six inches.
196: Really? Not enough of a challenge to remember your passwords?
200: I remember the buses in Chicago had signs with famous words of wisdom, and one was supposedly bt Mark Twain, "If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything"
You still have to remember stuff. Like how too spell stuff or whether you included the state if asked for a city. That kind of stuff.
202: yeah, like many "wise" maxims it doesn't really make sense if you take it literally.
I knew this was a red area, but seeing Mostriano's office really drives it home.
196: shiv had a Suzuki Swift, which is a great little car, but vastly underpowered for the Canadian Rockies, such that the technique for rolling terrain was to floor on the down hill so there'd be enough speed to make the next hill.
supposedly bt Mark Twain, "If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything"
That's rich coming from the biggest bullshit artist in the entire Mississippi watershed.
Rich, or the product of bitter experience?
re: 206
Odd. That wasn't my experience driving on moderately steep hills/mountains in Scotland. In fact, I had zero issues. There are different engines, though, so maybe it's that (mine is 95 bhp which is fine for a small car)? Or maybe I've just never experienced steep enough roads (entirely possible).
I have had that happen to me driving a hire car in Malta, where a few little roads were mostly fine and then would have some 1 in 3 switchback with a loose gravel surface, and a 1.3 litre Toyota only just made it, and my friend's small hire car had to give up part way up and roll back down.
It's probably not the same car in the UK and North America, NA cars are all heavier (so they can survive crashes with SUVs) resulting in smaller cars have worse performance.
Hrm, maybe since it's not sold in the US the Canada/Mexico version may not be as different from UK?
196: I think that Lancia was the model Tony Wilson bought on the Factory Records dime, obviously lost his license, then gave Peter Hook the keys, and Hooky foolishly parked it near the Hacienda so it was never seen again.
(this being both the peak era of car theft as a way of life. a few years later my dad would park the 405 GTD round there and leave it unlocked because that way, if the thieves didn't total it, at least they didn't do any damage getting in and it might be recovered. it also helped that he was usually in the area with cops, I guess.)
How much Nazi artifacts can there be in an antique store that specializes in military things before it's a problem?
