Teamwork wrote:The closest thing I have to a parking lot with a hill is a multi-level parking lot with a lot of ramps. If I go there early enough, I should be able to practice rolling back on purpose and finding where the clutch holds the car in place, not to mention learning to trust hill start assist and practicing inching forward, which will greatly expand my on-street parking options.
I didn't really fully understand hill start assist but I knew from being in the Subaru community a lot of people complained about it being too intrusive. That plus using a lot of UK instructional drivers ed (I don't know what they classify driving school over seas?) I resorted to the parking brake for my first few weeks. It was fine and really I didn't need any practice doing it- I just kind of did it and kept doing it. A great video showed me basically for key things to look for because I too was unsure of the clutch bite but when the car squats in the rear and lifts its nose is a good indication that you're good to slowly release the brake- key word slowly and progressive. Like I said in prior posts though, one random day I just tried it without it and I was fine. I wanted to really know the thresh holds of hill start assist though before getting over confident and so I could have a better understanding. I know a lot of purists probably hate the idea of the technology and don't need it but I really embrace it. I'm all for things that 'stay behind the scenes' and aid the driver. Not saying I wouldn't be able to drive stick without it but why hate on it?
I didn't get to the parking lot I wanted to practice in today (it was closed early this morning and it's part of a mall so it's definitely crowded now), but I did practice a bit on a fairly steep hill near my place. I've driven on that hill before and each time I thought that the car was going slow because it was a steep hill. It turns out that I've been fighting hill start assist. Sure enough, when I did the classic learning trick of roll backwards a bit, and then lift up the clutch to stop rolling back, I actually was able to do a no-gas launch. I might go back to the e-brake method for a bit since (as you pointed out above), you see the nose lift up and you KNOW that you're at the bite and once you let the e-brake down, you'll either be standing perfectly still (in which case you just lift the clutch a bit more while holding the accelerator steady) or you're moving forward. Also, with the e-brake method, I get to set some revs, which gives me a little extra reassurance.
When you did the e-brake method on hills, did you rev the engine as you did it, or would the nose of the car lift up even if you just brought the clutch to the bite without gas (at which point you'd be releasing the e-brake and adding gas simultaneously)? As I've said before, I've used the e-brake method to pull out of uphill parallel parking spaces the few times I've tried to park there, and I find it to be a smoother hill start than the other method (probably because I'm more confident about the car actually moving forward). I'll continue trying to not use the e-brake when there's no cars behind me though. When I took stick shift lessons, I was taught both methods for hill starts, but I always felt more secure with the e-brake method. As a matter of fact, I've noticed that as I pull out of parking spaces on level ground, I tend to time my release of the e-brake with the clutch reaching the biting point (which is actually how they seem to teach drivers in the U.K., according the many videos on YouTube that I've been watching).
I'm sure that hill start assist may be useful, but it's been a source of frustration for me because I feel like I need to accelerate harder to disable it, and that's caused me trouble in slow-speed situations, where I'd worry that I'm accelerating too fast to safely maneuver.
Those cross signals will greatly help you. Even when I drove an automatic, I liked knowing when the light will change. For us manual drivers in the U.S., that countdown is as useful as the yellow before green in other countries.
If not for those countdown crosswalks, I'm not entirely sure how I'd safely cross Queens Boulevard (which for those of you who don't know, has been nicknamed the "boulevard of death" in the past). As for driving, I used those countdown crosswalks early this morning to time a no-gas launch for when each light turned green. Again, very useful.
I'm sure it's programmed for fuel economy, but even without listening to the lights, I've still managed 30+ mpg (calculated by hand, NOT the on-board computer) if my driving was mostly highway. If it regularly recommended upshifts at about 2,500 rpm, I'd probably still find it annoying, but at least it would be more realistic.