How To Drive An Automatic Car | Learn to drive: Car control skills

[Music] automatic cars are becoming increasingly popular as they are easier and more relaxing to drive than a car with a manual gearbox new technologies such as hybrid or full electric cars are better suited to automatic gearboxes so as these types of cars slowly take over manual gearboxes will eventually disappear if you haven't driven an automatic car before the lack of a clutch pedal and different gearbox controls may cause confusion so in this video we will show how to drive an automatic car before we start make sure you subscribe to our channel and click the bell so you are alerted when we upload a new video also we love to read your comments so please scroll down and let us know what you think [Music] it sounds obvious but an automatic car is the same as a manual car except for the gearbox this means that the car will choose and control its gears for you but everything else will be the same the driver will still have to operate all the other car controls in exactly the same way as they would in a manual car so all of our other videos showing how to steer a car break progressively or maintain good Road position are still relevant just ignore anything about clutch control or gear selection since we don't have to change gears manually we can keep our hands on the steering wheel for more of the time which can help with car control also since we don't have to think about gear selection anymore this allows us to concentrate on other aspects of driving such as planning ahead or nearby hazards this car is a 2019 Suzuki Swift and it has a 1 liter petrol engine the gearbox has six speeds and a normal gear selector mounted in the center to start the engine we need to press and hold the foot brake whilst pushing the engine start button other cars may use a key to start the engine but we will usually need to press the brake pedal there are a few different types of automatic gearboxes but whatever your car has the gear selector will usually work in the same way there will be several letters and sometimes a few numbers the letters refer to the main drive modes P is for park after reverse end for neutral and D for Drive any extra letters or numbers you see are there so you can have more control over the gearbox for certain situations so check your car's manual to understand when these extra settings should be used the park setting locks the transmission preventing the car from moving it should always be selected when we park and leave the car but we also apply the handbrake for extra security we select drive for normal forward driving we press and hold the brake pedal and then select drive when we release the brake the car will slowly creep forward this creep function is useful as it is the perfect speed for maneuvering to increase our speed we press the accelerator pedal and the car will change gear whenever it is needed if we are accelerating gently the car will change up gears earlier to maintain efficiency but if we need to accelerate quickly and press the accelerator harder the gearbox will change up gears much later to give us more engine power whenever we press the brake to slow down or stop the car will change down gears on its own so that we always have a suitable gear available if we need to stop for a moment look at this pedestrian crossing we can leave the gearbox in Drive and just keep the brake press to hold the car still when we can see that we are going to be stopped for some time we can select Park as the gearbox will be locked and we won't need to keep the brake pressed to stop the car moving forward Hill starts in a manual car require careful coordination of the cars controls but in contrast Hill starts in automatic cars are really easy we'll stop on this hill to practice once we're ready to go we push the brake pedal to select Drive then simply lift our foot from the brake and press the accelerator to drive away it is impossible to stall as the gearbox controls everything for us if we are only stopping for a moment on the hill perhaps when in a queue of traffic then we don't even need to come out of Drive just hold the brake to stop the car and then push the accelerator to drive away the cars creep function stops the car from rolling back next let's try maneuver so that we can use reverse gear parallel parking between these two minis should do to select reverse gear we need to press and hold the brake pedal and then we can use the gearboxes creep function to slowly move the car we don't need to press the accelerator just release the brake pedal to let the car move and push the brake when we need it to stop again once we have finished we select Park and release the foot brake most automatic cars allow us to manually control which gear is used on this car we can select em on the gearbox shifter and then use small paddles on the steering wheel to control which gear is used other cars may have numbers or extra letters which offer other functions so check your car's manual if needed [Music] in certain situations having manual control over our gears can be beneficial for example to reduce wheel spin on slippery surfaces we can choose to pull away in 2nd gear or when driving down very steep hills we can select a lower gear than normal to increase engine braking and reduce the need to brake in this case we are using lower gears to allow the engine to develop extra power to get us up to speed quickly on this dual carriageway but once we are driving normally it is usually more efficient to select the normal drive setting on the gearbox the last setting of the gearbox to talk about is neutral this gearbox mode select snow gear and allows the car to freewheel this might be useful if we need to push or tow the car but it shouldn't be selected when driving as it would allow the car to roll downhill on its own reducing our control over the car so remember to learn how your cars gear selector works use the creep function to move slowly use any manual controls when needed and select drive for smooth and easy journey [Music] if you found this video interesting and would like to be notified when we release the next one then please click our logo to subscribe to our channel if you would like to help us make new videos then please consider becoming a member or patron of our channel thanks for watching [Music]