GEARS – UP OR DOWN?

When driving and needing to change gear, you hear experienced drivers talking about changing up a gear or down a gear. What does this mean? To change up a gear you would be changing from say 1st gear to 2nd gear, 2nd gear to 3rd gear etc. To change down gears would be changing from 4th gear to 3rd gear, or even 4th gear to 2nd gear. An easy way to work out what is ‘up a gear’ and what is ‘down a gear’, think of floors in a tall building. To go from the 1st floor to the 2nd floor would you be going ‘up’ the building. Therefore, if we call the floors ‘gears’, to change from 1st gear to 2nd gear you would be going ‘up’ the gears. To go from the 4th floor to the 2nd floor would you be going ‘down’ the building. Therefore, if we call the floors ‘gears’, to change from 4th gear to 2nd gear you would be going ‘down’ the gears.