I'm not sure it's really that big a deal. My dad taught me to drive by going out to a lonely national park with a lot of parking lots and letting me figure it out. On an automatic, yes. 20 minutes later he said, okay, good, now drive us home. And I did. Driving isn't that magic. So I will probably teach my kids how to drive our pickup first, and then for laughs we will take my 455 horsepower Camaro out to learn how a manual works. And then they will not be driving it much after, hahahaha...
I think I started learning manual transmissions when I was about 8 years old, riding with my father. He'd pick less busy stretches of road and tell me I had to shift for him, while he operated the clutch. At first, he told me what gear to move to next, then started to just say "shift" and expect me to have figured out we need to upshift or downshift, and eventually he would just warn me I was on duty and then expect me to anticipate and synchronize with his pedal actions without further voice signals.
When I was tall enough, he'd have me move his car around on our long driveway so I learned to feather the clutch for start/stop maneuvers in first gear. By the time I was getting my learner's permit and hitting the road for the first time, I already had the theory and practice for the drive-train and could focus on the more important traffic rules and vigilance.
I still remember his "graduation" test for me, which was taking me on a ride to a nearby very steep hill and parallel parking. Then, he gave me the keys and said very sincerely that I needed to pull out, drive around the neighborhood, return, and park back in the same spot without burning the clutch and without stalling the engine...
Driving is one of those things that most of us probably have no clue how everyone else actually thinks about and does it.
To that end, I just don't know. I expect I will have an issue teaching my children. Biking has already thrown me some curve balls. Nothing insurmountable. But the more you have on the bike, the harder it is for the learner to get it going.
I mean, I hate biking without my shoes that attach to the pedal nowdays. I would not at all attempt to teach my kids on such a bike for a while.
Oh man, I remember how long it took me to learn to ride a bike. Quite a lot longer than driving a car, I'm afraid. Learning that you have to turn one way, fall, and turn the other way is definitely counterintuitive and requires your brain to do some rewiring.
I also hate attaching my feet to the pedals. I do not want to confess that I've hit the ground in a very undignified manner more than once because I couldn't get my feet unclipped in time :(
Falling down is no big deal and expected. Why you should always weara helmet. My favorite is wheni released my left foot, but leaned right. Did that twice.
Nowadays, i feel more stable clipped in.
And i know countersteering is a thing. Don't really process it, though.
As I said ... we will go learn to drive the monster, and then they will not really get many opportunities after that. Show some responsibility and I may let them drive it some more with me in the car, but it will be some time before I trust them to have unlimited access to a high performance car.
Though to be fair, the latest iteration of the stability and traction control is pretty amazing. Short of turning it off, or driving with inappropriate tires for conditions, I can't really get the car out of shape without turning off the nannies. I can hang it out a bit but I could never manage to pull off those beautiful crowd-killing losses of control that Mustangs seem to apt to pull at Cars & Coffee events around the country.
So aside from just driving too fast and making physics an insurmountable issue, they could probably drive it pretty safely if I somehow made it so the nannies could not be disabled.
The latest iterations of stability control have gotten quite good. I can drive my '18 1LE like a jerk, in the rain, on twisty roads and other than the flashing of the warning light it's not really intrusive, it just keeps me from going sideways. Quite remarkable how well they've dialed it in. Once in a while it does kill the fun too abruptly, but mostly it just makes you think the car has vastly more traction than it does.
