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It’s always so hard to explain to someone how to drive a stick. After years of doing it, I just do it, and forget how I actually do it, I just know.
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With Picknar driving and Thoos in the back with Jo, Rodrigo said, “okay, there’s Audri’s car. I have an errand, so, Thoos, why don’t you take Purrloin back to the house.” Jo said, “I’m sticking with Val.” Rodrigo replied, “yeah. I got that.” They get out of the car, and Rodrigo took Audri’s phone from Thoos and said, “okay, Thoos, let me set up your smart phone map app… there you go. This will direct you back.” Then he looked in Audri’s car and said, “oh, it looks like Audri drives a stick. So, I seem to recall you hold down the third pedal, on the left, to start it. Then you have to ease off it as you give it gas. And then push it down when switching gears. One-through-five neutral in the middle. Or something like that.” Rodrigo then pointed with his thumb at Picknar and said, “I’ll take Picknar with me so only one of you dies in a horrible ball of flaming steel.” Jo comments, “her name’s ‘Val.'” Thoos turned to Picknar and said, “Picknar, I’m sorry that’s the way you’ll die. But I’m sure it will be a noble death.” Rodrigo clutched his stomach and laughed and said, “love the optimism!”
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She identifies as Picknar now.
Just have to wait/feel for the “bite” point. Some of the best and most worthless advice for driving a manual.
Eh, why not let the humans drive?
The hubs will be all that’s left of that poor car’s gears.
One assumes that the muscle memory of how to drive still survives.
That is halfway reasonable given that the aliens don’t have translation chips and they are using their host body’s skills to speak english. They might can use other skills as they become aware of them.
I taught a girlfriend how to drive my stick (sic) on a vacation to Washington, DC, so she could share the driving duties. She managed to stall us in Maryland making a left turn in front of interstate-speeding traffic and had to be coaxed, and I mean COAXED, into starting the car again, engaging first gear, and getting us out of the way of six lanes of speeders. A wonderful test of patience and staying calm before she went to pieces in front of me. And all of them.
I was another five miles down the road before the shakes hit. Lucky me.
In the UK you have to pass your driving test in a manual (stick shift) to have a driving licence that covers driving them. If you pass in an automatic or electric you cannot legally drive a manual. It used to be that almost everyone took their test in a manual, but more under 30s now are tending to pass in an electric because they see their entire future as driving electric. However 90% of tests are still passed in manuals.
(Sorry for multiple attempts to reply, iPad threw a hissy fit.)
Bureaucracy at its finest… If you don’t know how to drive a manual you’re probably not going to get far enough down the road to cause anybody any serious problems, and if you somehow do, you could still be ticketed for impeding traffic, reckless endangerment, or various other things depending on just how stupid you decide to be.
The only thing the licensing requirement does is let them *also* ticket those who *have* learned to drive a manual for the egregious sin of not bending the knee to their lords and masters and seeking their oh-so-gracious permission first, even if they’re not a danger to anyone on the road.
It’s all about being able to control who is allowed to travel. The serfs escaped to the cities a couple centuries ago and have had the audacity to travel freely as they please ever since. Need to slowly get them used to the idea of only travelling with permission again if we’re ever going to bring them to heel.
Serfdom ended in the UK and most of Europe around 700 years ago with the Black Death. You’re way out talking about a couple of centuries ago, apart from in Russia which did not have the massive population contraction since it did not have the Black Death.