Driving in the USA

Our daughter works in UK for an American company, earlier this year she and 3 male colleagues were on a business trip to US and had a hire car.

It was of course an automatic, none of her male colleagues had ever driven an automatic ( she has an automatic)  so they asked her to drive them.

The car was a big people carrier and none of them could figure out how to work anything in the car,  plus  DD was not happy driving anything so big,  so they went back into the hire place and requested something a bit  smaller!

I thought it was a poor show on the part of the men that they needed to ask a girl to drive them!  Driving an automatic is very easy after all.

The car handover took place on the 7th floor  of a multi storey car park. The valet just brought the car over, jumped out, left the engine running and ran off! - no explanation, nothing. It is around 10 years since we last had an automatic so took a few minutes to work out what to do but by the time OH had negotiated the 7 floors and the streets of Boston to pick up the rest of the gang he was an expert. I have driven the car as well and size really doesn't matter!

I had a Chrysler Neon auto when I was in the USA about ten years ago. I've always had manual boxes so it was a new experience to me. Can't recall it being an issue. You do feel a bit dinky up against all those Dodge Rams though.

Snap so did we on our first visit to Florida in 1997.

A Ford F350 wide bodied crew cab is 20 feet long & 8 feet wide 😲

I think you're confusing a ML with a GL

I can never understand how people can say 'I cant drive an auto' .... 😕 there's only two pedals to choose from

Me neither. My last four cars have been automatics including two tow cars. I can't really see any advantage to a manual gearbox car?

David

Quite!

I suppose driving on the other side of the road could be a little daunting, combine that with an unfamiliar car.

DD said she soon got used to it, though the gear selector was on the steering column.

We have had only automatics since the early 70s, and although she has a full licence, both her (handed down) cars have been automatics, so she  is very used to driving them, and much prefers automatics.

No, we are not confusing the two but we have seen both.

All the pick ups are simply huge.

Manhattan is simply crazy. We were in Times Square on Saturday evening and there were simply thousands of people. Security is high in TS with the police standing under a little canopy, fully armed with automatic rifles, at all times, day or night

Better fuel consumption and usually cheaper to buy from new, to name just two things.