> A lot of people in Germany think automatics are for people who can't drive properly. In a country that overwhelmingly drives manual that is a reasonable ass

> A lot of people in Germany think automatics are for people who can't drive properly. In a country that overwhelmingly drives manual that is a reasonable assumption. Many Americans seem to get quite defensive about driving automatic. In America, driving manual is a choice, and a weird thing to do. Therefore driving manual there has many value judgements associated with it. It is "macho" or something for driving elitists and gearheads to do. In overwhelmingly manual countries, this is not the case. Here in the UK, your 85yo grandmother drives a manual. Your 16yo daughter drives one. Everybody but everybody drives a manual, nobody goes around thinking that driving a manual is novel or macho or in any way notable. The very few people that I have ever known who drive automatic were truly awful drivers. They took the easier automatic-only test because they kept failing the manual one. It is not an unreasonable assumption to think that someone driving an automatic who chooses to do so, is a poor driver - but only in a country that is strongly manual.