I have a brother in law, 48 years old and he has never driven a vehicle with a manual transmission. I tried jumping his car once and he didn’t even know that there is are positive and negative battery terminals. As hard as I found it to believe, he had never encountered either experience.
Burt Reynolds never learned to drive a standard either.
My first few cars had manual transmission. I even rebuilt a gearbox or two, I think; manual ones are easy. Helped my uncle to work on many parts of his cars.
However I haven't owned a car with manual transmission in years. They are just not as practical in a city. On a freeway a manual gearbox will save you some gas; however in a city it will be just a [dangerous] distraction. I'm more focused on getting from A to B, rather than on performance. The car can take care of the torque conversion ratio just fine on its own. There are transmissions today that are the next step past the slushbox. The electric torque converter that is used in Prius is likely more efficient than a manual gearbox, and it has no switchable gears. Quite an ingenious piece of mechanics, actually.
“I tried jumping his car once and he didn’t even know that there is are positive and negative battery terminals.”
Some years ago, I went on a call where two women tried to jump start a minvan with a dead battery.
One admitted the conversation went something like:
“Which one do you put on which?”
“I don’t know, just put it one way and if that’s not right change it. What’s the worst that could happen?”
One fried electrical system and the other vehicle on fire...