Manual transmission foils thieves again

A pair of Florida carjackers who attempted to steal a Corvette were thwarted by the car's baffling-to-them manual transmission.

The owner of the 2002 Corvette, 51-year-old Randolph Bean, was in the car, driving by an Orlando hospital, when the two men approached him and forced him out of the car and to the ground at gunpoint.

The thieves were planning on driving off in the car, but had to ask Bean for instructions on how to work the stickshift, UPI quotes a report from local TV station WOFL-TV.

"They apparently couldn't start it. I had to tell him four different times to push in the clutch, because it's a standard transmission," Bean said.

"My first thought was 'I guess we don't have driver's ed in school anymore because no one knows how to drive a stick.' And my second thing was, don't shoot me because you can't start the car, I'm trying to help you out here. Thankfully they didn't."

The thieves got away with Bean's phone, wallet and keys and have not yet been apprehended.

In the past year, there have been several reports of attempted car thefts foiled by the thieves' inability to drive a manual transmission car.

(UPI via Jalopnik)