Automatics = Lazy Americans, damn right they are!

[Luke Rickert]

hey now, be nice to those Norwegians, democratic socialism is not
without its major advantages over certain systems. Aside from the fact
that they can conduct elections, their high, but generally progressive
tax system discourages such stupid things as SUV's.  From what I have
seen in a couple of visits and talking to Norwegians here, there are in
fact much more active, healthier, better educated and certainly more
polite than most Americans. (for that matter they can speak english with
greater proficiency than most of us) I would also venture to guess that
they drive more Audis too. 

As for automatic transmissions, the only reason, in my humble opinion,
to use then is if you are physically incapable of shifting a car.
Otherwise they are mechanically inferior in every way. They are over
complicated, have a couple orders of magnitude too many parts, are often
unreliable, non-robust, inefficient, remove one means of car control and
are just plain boring to drive. So yes, americans are lazy, we drive
everywhere, with only one person per car, creating horrible traffic
because we don't want to walk, demand automatics so we can talk on cell
phone, drink latte and "gesture" at other drivers. "We" see cars as
appliances and think NACAR is motor sports and expect the world to
revolve around each of us. In more civilized countries, (read Norway)
they have or are in process of, banning hand held cell phone use by
drivers. Not here, we are free to run over everyone else in our gas
guzzling 4 ton+ SOV-SUV's because we are too busy doing other things
while "driving."

 that is quite enough

Luke 

cobram at juno.com wrote:
> 
> Per Lindgren <lindgre at online.no> writes:
> > No wonder! The general American is too lazy to shift for themselves!
> > Or they
> > dont know how to rive a manual transmissioned car! Why else do you
> > think
> > that almost all cars have slushboxes on your shores?
> 
> Be willing to bet there are more standard shift cars (and nice ones at
> that) in the State of California than there are people in the entire
> country of Norway.  When given a choice, most people in a given
> population, I would venture to say would pick Automatics for their car,
> all factors being equal.  It's a matter of convenience, and since the
> majority of any population views the car as an appliance, a means of
> locomotion,  when you're not straddled with fuel which is 70%  tax you
> pick what's most comfortable, powerful  and easy to drive.  I bet if our
> government screwed us over on taxes the way yours does,  Americans would
> be driving shoebox sized stick shift cars in droves too.
> Driving an automatic doesn't reflect on a populations "lazy" quotient.
> It would probably be much more reasonable to draw such an inference if a
> country, oh, lets say, had only half it's population in the workforce.
> 
> BCNU,
> Cobram at Juno.Com
> http://www.geocities.com/MotorCity/Flats/1469/
> 
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-- 
Luke Rickert
www.engr.orst.edu/~rickert