I doubt there will ever be a stick-shift revival in the United States, no matter how much gas prices and temperatures soar. Gearheads will always adore manuals, but they're in the minority—most Americans prefer the ease of an automatic, especially on gridlocked freeways. Fewer than 9 percent of new cars in the United States are manuals, and that figure is set to drop to 6 percent by 2012. And rare is the driving school that teaches teenage newbies how to work a clutch.

Bear in mind:

Drivers apply their brakes between 10 and 25 percent more than they need to!

A single solitary driver, if they stop "competing" and instead adopt some unusual driving habits, can actually wipe away some of the frustrating traffic patterns on a highway. That "nice" noncompetitive driver can erase traffic waves. I suspect that the opposite is also true: normal competitive behavior CREATES the traffic waves.

From the recent archive:

Although there are about a million more miles of road in the United States today than there were in 1947 (there are also two more states), two hundred million more vehicles are registered to drive on them. There is little romance left in long car rides.