quote of the day

I've seen this attributed to Democratic senator Tom Harkin, but it seems that it's probably older than that. You can understand the temptation to keep recycling it though, as it's nice and pithy:

Politics is like driving. To go backward put it in R. To go forward put it in D.

Obviously the party references place this firmly in the USA, but so does the unthinking assumption that everyone will be familiar with the layout of an automatic gearbox. I don't have any figures for the ratio (if you'll pardon the pun) of automatic to manual transmission cars sold in the USA, but the general references in US book and film to a "stick shift" being something weird and exotic suggests it's quite high. This article from September 2006 suggests that the ratio (pardon the pun, again) is about 4:1 in favour of manual transmission in Europe; I wouldn't be surprised if the situation were reversed in the USA. I suppose the sheer size of the place means the ratio (pardon, etc.) of driving along in a straight line in the same gear to stopping and starting and going round corners and shit is relatively high compared to little old Europe.

If anyone has a definitive set of figures I'd be interested to see them. Well, I say interested, I'd tolerate them. Well, I say tolerate......[etc.]

[Footnote: this article suggests that less than 10% of cars sold in the USA now have manual transmission. Lazy bastards.]