DITTO on manual cars. I always thought that driving stick is so much more fun, but it's impossible to get a rental car with manual transmission. The entire fleet of Zipcars has no manual gear cars, for example.

And I don't understand why... everybody is licensed driver, which means everybody can drive stick. Also manual transmission cars are cheaper. So what compels rental companies to have automatic transmission fleets?

> everybody is licensed driver, which means everybody can drive stick.

You can take your driving test in an automatic in many states (US).

Huh, I did not know that.

Btw, are you Turkish?

yes

Not me. Most of my life I lived in cities with very good public transport systems, but I know that once I am done getting educated, I will live in a city that one can't live in without a car.

Public transit and bikes are cheaper and cleaner, I agree. But goddammit, they are so inconvenient. Public transit is annoying because it's never close to where you live or work - your destination gets averaged with everybody else's destination in the area and therefore involves walking to subway, waiting for subway, going places, getting out, walking to work... ugh. Biking is annoying due to whether (both winter and summer is super annoying) and security (locking bike, unlocking bike, findign place to lock it...). you can just leave a car somewhere and press a button and be pretty sure it won't be stolen.

I much prefer a world with big garages, big roads, lots of free parking spaces, spread-out low-rise cities, driving to huge stores for shopping (walmart, costcos, home depot) instead of malls and little shops.

Disagree utterly, but upvoted anyway.

I worked at a multinational bank just last year and all these new efficiency procedures are lightyears away. I think in large companies, management philosophies really will need to start at the C-level executives in order to ever be implemented.