Long story short: I’m (24M) American, and I’m visiting my long-distance Romanian boyfriend for the first time soon. In Romania, most cars are manual - including all the ones owned by my boyfriend’s family (I’ll be staying with them). I’ve never driven a manual before. His dad told me he can give me a quick lesson, and that I’m welcome to use their cars if I want; otherwise, I can rent an automatic. I don’t have access to any manual cars here in the U.S. to practice on, so I’m not sure what to do.
Not quite that simple. Speed is only a rough guideline. When you shift depends largely on how hard you’re accelerating. In a typical car if you’re trying to get up speed to get on the freeway, 25 is way too soon to shift into 3rd. I wouldn’t until at least 30. Same if you’re going up a hill, at 25 the car won’t have enough torque for 3rd gear.
It was just a basic guideline being taught to me back then. And I guess it’s mainly for cruising speeds. You might want to stick with a lower gear for accelerating. There are of course all kinds of exceptions. And NL is basically flat, so I don’t know about hills :)
But the km/h list gives me something to fall back on when in doubt. Driving is stressful enough for me as it is.