BadNick

One car I have now has a 6 speed manual trans that has a "safety switch" as mentioned above, so you can't start the car no matter what position the stick is in unless you depress the clutch pedal. On a related note, some people who install very heavy clutches to hold big power/torque end up with such high thrust loads on the front crank thrust washer that it can cause "crank walk". One of the primary causes of "crank walk" is starting the car with the clutch pedal depressed and thus putting all that thrust on a non or barely lubricated bearing. So many of these folks bypass the starter safety switch which forces you to push the clutch to start the car. There have been a few cases where people forgot the put the trans in neutral, clicked the ignition to start, and ended up throwing the car into an accident. My way of dealing with that was to install a triple plate clutch that has very low pedal effort/thrust but can still hold 1000 ft-lbs...but this clutch is sometimes referred to as a "theft deterent" since hardly anyone can get into the car and just drive it without stalling unless they spend some time practicing on it...one of the toughest clutches to learn, but IMO once learned, a thing of beauty and functionality. (HKS triple disk clutch w/lightweight flywheel)

ps: for my edit I added the italicized part above when I realized I was blabbing on without making the connection I intended to make.