Kodos, it's one thing to argue with the guy when he's doing something you disapprove of, but this is totally innocuous and not his fault in any way. Be nice, please.
Yes, I have... That wasn't meant in a sexist way. I would have had the same thought if it had been a guy who had been the driver. Seriously though, if you can't remember to engage a simple e-brake, how can one be expected the handle the intricacies of a manual transmission? It's not impossible that her car had the 5-speed stick, but I would say it is improbable.
I hate close calls, though they're better than actually being hit. Still, I fret over how people park next to my car, and it's 20 years old. Some people just don't know how to drive, or where they're going, or what they're doing. That's a bad combination when you step into a multi-ton moving object.
I actually rode horses for about 10 years or so when my folks owned a deed at R-Ranch up in Napa. I actually got to the point where I was leading trail rides for new visitors. Saw a mountain lion during a ride and had to get the horses safely by without them being spooked or us being eaten. Good times.
To be fair we can all forget to do the simple things like putting on the hand-brake the odd time. Maybe only once in a thousand times but it's still there. And driving a manual is hardly intricate
The first and last time I ever took a train was from Northern California to Texas. It was already going to be a long trip, and then there was a terrible derailment elsewhere in the country due to a truck sitting on the tracks, so our train had to creep through every intersection as a precaution, which added many, many hours to the trip. Add on my sister getting motion sickness and me thinking our "family room" was the closet where they were stowing our luggage at first...never again.
The thing hissed at me when we passed. To this day I don't know how I didn't end up having to clean my saddle when we got back to the stable.
Long romantic cross continent train journeys are... bullshit. You can't pay enough to make it pleasant. Plain old public transport trains are awesome though
This guy just cracks me up because, really, he's so dense he shouldn't be behind the wheel of a car. One can forgive him for not putting the car in park when he stopped. Shit happened and the "do the one thing you need to do when parking a car" was probably replaced with "grab jerry can" in his 640K cache memory. But it's utterly ASTOUNDING how much he misses when the SUV rolls away. First of all you'd think just that mythical "sixth sense" would have told him the car was beginning to move while it was behind him. His hearing would have told him something happened when the car bucked the curb, which I'm sure made a decent noise; but forgiving all of that how did he not SEE THAT THE CAR WAS GONE from the side of vision when he actually stands up and looks at the highway! I mean the car should have been RIGHT THERE! How did he not notice slightly different shadows, not seeing this large object just in the extreme edge of his vision?! It's utterly astounding this guy hasn't been taken out in some hilarious Darwin Award fashion yet. And, yeah, dropping the nozzle on the ground is just classic.
Maybe I shouldn't admit this, but it's news to me that you should *always* use a parking brake with an automatic, even on flat ground. I've only ever used it on hills. Never was a thing I was taught, by driving instructors, parents, no one.
Eh, it's more of making it part of a habit than it is "always use it" thing. If you make it second nature then you won't have to remember to use in situations where you actually need it. Hell, turning on my headlights is second nature to me so I pretty much always drive with them on, even in the daylight. There's also argument that it helps reduce strain on transmission parts responsible for holding the car in park and using the parking brake keeps it working properly. If you rarely use it the cable and mechanical parts of it can become rusted/useless meaning either needing a repair or it won't work when you *really* need it. It also puts two lines of failure between the car and an occurrence that'd cause the car to move. For your car to now move TWO things have to fail, the transmission parking pawl AND parking brake. It's just good practice to have.
Then you had lousy driving instructors. I'll leave your parents out of this. Whether your car has an automatic or manual transmission, you should ALWAYS set the parking brake when parking. That's why it's called the parking brake. That's a bit odd. In my neck of the woods, no one drives with their headlights on in the daytime unless it's raining. It's also done occasionally as a political statement in support of something-or-other. In California, the law requires headlights to be turned on from 30 minutes after sunset to 30 minutes before sunrise. Or maybe that's Shabbat, I can't remember which.