I had a similar experience a long time ago in Boston. I worked for a real estate brokerage as an administrative assistant. For anyone that might not know, the Boston real estate market is basically dead unless it’s between March and September. I had already been sitting in the office by myself for months, doing absolutely nothing. No calls. Nothing besides an occasional trip to the bank.

We got so much snow the city shut down. Everyone was told not to drive, all public transport was shut down, people were skiing in the streets. My boss fired me for not going into work. Apparently I should have walked for 3 hours in 2 feet of snow so I could sit in an empty office by myself doing nothing. His office was a block away, in another brokerage he owned, conveniently nestled right underneath his apartment.

Let’s not get political now.

Fact: military officers sometimes use very small amounts of dihydrogen monoxide to torture prisoners to extent that the prisoners will admit to committing actions they had not committed.

Once again, that’s not the comparison. The comparison is between generally used transmissions, not manuals vs a small percentage of automatic transmissions that have the expensive add on computer/lidar controlled engine and braking systems.

Yeah but that’s cutting edge technology. Lane assist and automatic acceleration/braking is a tiny percentage of cars, plus it comes only on fairly high end or well optioned vehicles. Sure if I could afford a 70k robot vehicle that would be easier, but that’s not really what we were talking about or comparing.

Driving was a major part of my job when I lived in Boston and I drove manual. Honestly it isn’t very fun being in traffic, but I wouldn’t say it’s much worse than driving an automatic. It becomes old hat. It probably depends a bit more on how stiff the clutch is and other mechanical variables, but I would agree with another commenter here that it does make people better drivers. I would also say manuals aren’t for everybody and that’s ok, but I also think they should be the norm rather than the complacently comforting automatics that make everyone feel like they are in a golf cart rather than a large metal missile.