Long story short: I’m (24M) American, and I’m visiting my long-distance Romanian boyfriend for the first time soon. In Romania, most cars are manual - including all the ones owned by my boyfriend’s family (I’ll be staying with them). I’ve never driven a manual before. His dad told me he can give me a quick lesson, and that I’m welcome to use their cars if I want; otherwise, I can rent an automatic. I don’t have access to any manual cars here in the U.S. to practice on, so I’m not sure what to do.
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It would be a chore to learn while visiting. Just have your boyfriend drive you around and maybe rent a car for a longer trip.
I personally find it stressful driving in foreign countries.
Are you sure you will be allowed to drive a manual car in Romania with your American license if you didn’t take the test with a manual car? I live in a different European country and here if you take the test with an automatic car, you are only allowed to drive automatic cars. You should research this.
It’s definitely different from an automatic car and requires more concentration. Once you get used to it, it’s not difficult. I was older than you are now when I learned to drive at all (which I did on a manual car) and managed it anyway.
US licenses don’t differentiate. There’s no way to tell by the license which transmission you used on the test. Shouldn’t be a problem.
For that exact reason some countries (my country included) don’t accept an American license unless you do a test here first.
Though IIRC, that applies for both manuals and automatics, because American drivers education isn’t really trusted here.
With the Geneva convention on Road Traffic they must recognize it, at least for visitors. However you are probably right if OP tried to move there and get a local license, they’d need to retest.
That is totally fair because I literally, and I mean literally, drove around the block for my American driver’s test. My entire test:
K start the car and turn right out of the parking lot onto the street
Turn right at the stop
Turn right at the stop
Parallel park right there
Pull back onto the road
Turn right at the stop
Turn right at the stop
Turn right into the DMV parking lot and park anywhere
Congratulations, you passed!
This was in a residential area too, so there was hardly any traffic and I never went above 25mph/40kph
Exactly: I have friends that got a drivers license in th US, and the education/test is honestly a joke compared to what they require here, and it clearly shows in the number of driving-related deaths.
Generally you are allowed to drive whatever you could at home. Since US licenses allow you to drive a manual you can drive a manual even if you never had. By contrast if you are from a country that makes the distinction you can’t drive a manual even if you have been practicing (how?) and just need to do the final test to drive a manual. (I’m not sure how someone without a manual endorsement would go about getting it in such countries, but whatever that process is)
I don’t really think there’s any “generally” here: It differs quite a bit between countries. I believe in some countries they won’t allow you to drive a manual unless your license specifies it (i.e. an American license isn’t valid for a manual).
The US doesn’t have licenses differentiated for automatic or manual, well, none of the 8 states I’ve lived in anyway, so there’s no way for Romania to know.
No it’s pretty general. Check out the following international treaties:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Convention_on_Road_Traffic
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vienna_Convention_on_Road_Traffic
As a benefit of these treaties, if I so chose (and we’re rich) I could even ship my car to Europe and just drive it around (up to 6 months) without really doing anything! It doesn’t need to meet most any of the EU car rules either.
Now if I tried to permanently import it, I’d have to make modifications like light colors and such to make it legal.
But really for visitors the rules are pretty lax. You need an international driving permit which is really just a translated license.
You can forget these international treaties. No Romanian policeman is supposed to know or observe them.
Romanian law is what counts.
Soon there will be some EU law regarding driver’s licenses, but not yet.
Foreigners driving around isn’t that uncommon, especially in Europe…
Sure it’s possible that if stopped you may get hassled more than usual, made to wait while the officer asks the station what to do but there’s no real risk of anything more than that.
I have my US (state) driver’s license & my IDP, neither which specify manual/automatic, so there’s nothing stopping me from driving a manual legally. In Romania, from what my bf told me, if you pass your test on an automatic you can de jure only drive automatic as you have a marker on your license, but de facto you can drive whatever as there are no actual legal penalties mentioned in the law for driving a manual with a marked license.
You might want to check the details here: I know that in some European countries, you’ll have trouble renting a car at all with an American license unless you pass a driving test in a European country first to get certified. In fact, in several countries I don’t think an American license is valid at all until you pass a test. It’s probably worth checking out the details for Romania.
When I was in Romania last year the rental company (enterprise) wouldn’t accept my US driver license…not sure if it is Romanian law or company policy though.
You also need an IDP: “U.S. citizens who wish to drive in Romania must have an International Driving Permit (IDP) in addition to the valid U.S. state drivers’ license (DL).” https://ro.usembassy.gov/u-s-citizen-services/additional-resources-for-u-s-citizens/driving-in-romania/
Ah missed you said you have your international drivers permit. You’re good then, and there’s a lot of country roads in Romania to learn on…I say give learning manual a shot :)
Eh, he’s alright. Whenever I pick up Emanual in my Uber, he’s decent people…
…what?
Did I misread the situation?
Driving manual is not difficult, but unlike the opposite scenario, it’s not something you can learn with only short instructions.
It does take time to develop the motor skills in order do it without thinking about it. The practice wlll take maybe an afternoon or two if you do nothing else. I’d advise you to do it over more than one day to allow yourself to sleep on it and come back at it
Once you’ve learned it, you’ll never think about it again though.
Manual is for the big boys
We men just love touching shafts.
It’s definitely something you can learn in just a few lessons, particularly if you are just driving around town here and there. There’s a rhythm and muscle memory to it, and once you get it, it becomes super easy.
I think I traded in my last stick-shift (a Jetta) 13+ years ago, and there are still times when I am driving and my left foot instinctively moves toward an invisible clutch…
It takes a bit of practice. A few minutes of instruction can show you how it works, but then you will want to actually practice (maybe an hour or so) on some quiet roads before driving in traffic.
Nah, takes you 15 minutes to learn, and just a few weeks of practice to make it perfectly smooth
If the clutch survives.
If the clutch doesn’t survive, it was already near failure anyway.
There’s always a few topics that bring the most annoying people out and manual driving is one of them.
No a learner isn’t going to destroy a clutch. You could also grind a gear a dozen times in a learner session and still not strip it.
These types of shitty comments only keep people from trying new things out of fear or embarrassments.
A learner could destroy a clutch (I’ve seen it, though it was a long time ago when clutches weren’t as good as today), but it’s not likely these days. Plus I’m not going to let a learner destroy a clutch by using a method that helps them really get a feel for it: have them get the car moving without using the gas.
Hard revving and riding the clutch out would be far harder on a clutch than the slipping needed to get moving without touching the gas.
I would recommend practicing on a truck at first. The clutch is beefier and can take the punishment of a newbie, and you’ll get more of an idea of how the clutch feels when it engages.
Trucks don’t have too much to do with it. It’s completely different per car in general. I’ve driven in cars that are almost impossible to stall.
Hondas (90s) have been the easiet manual to get moving I’ve ever seen. You practically can’t stall them. (Toyatas too, 90’s Corollas are something else).
And I disagree with the truck - those can make learning harder. One of the hardest I’ve ever driven was a Ford from the 90’s. Heavy as hell clutch that was too small, terrible gear ratios so starting off was a bitch, with big gaps between the gears so you had to run out each gear until you ran out of revs.
But I’ve also driven old trucks with granny gears - an extra-low gear below first for getting moving with a heavy load. Those you just let off the clutch and the truck moves at a walking pace.
It’s less the stalling and more that the clutch is heavy duty and can take the abuse of a learner grinding it a lot more.
Depends on your definition of ‘difficult’. I can pull a motherboard and replace it, I can hand-edit the Windows registry to do some shit most people aren’t even aware is possible, etc. Are those things difficult? No, because I know how to do them. They are complex and technical and require a fair bit of knowledge and understanding to not screw it up though. Everything is difficult until you learn how to do it, then it’s not. Might be better to ask how hard it is to learn? Cause I can’t drive at all so I’m guessing it’s somewhere between multiplication tables and organic chemistry but that’s probably not helpful. :P
I had a friend learn how to drive a manual for a trip to Italy. It took maybe 2 20 minute sessions before she was comfortable with it. When she got there the driving was fine but the honking freaked her out 😂
Since they say they will be giving you a quick lesson… might be allright. It will most likely need some time to get used to it but you might be fine. See how the quick lesson goes? They might show you around the neighborhood for you to then drive around yourself and get used to it a bit.
It will be a whole another thing to keep in mind so be extra careful with your driving probably
It’s easy. Just read the manual.
In a small modern car its not super bad but will never be as easy as automatic. Getting used to using your left foot is annoying though. I had to use an old boat without power steering and quite when I was young and got my license on a friends automatic later in life. Im someone who hates driving in general though.
