Okay I wouldn't say no one know hao to drive a manual, but a lot of people I know have more automatics, many of my friends have only automatics and no one in my family except for my dad has a manual. My mother may know but right now she has automatic. Here it is not required to know how to drive stick before you get your license, in fact, my driver's ed car was an automatic. I remember my grandparents telling me that manuals were common in the 50s and 60s, and they didn't like it. It was either "Three on the Tree or Four on the Floor", Three on the Tree means that the shifter is like a column shifter but it has to be shifted into different gears while driving. Four on the Floor is a four speed and you shift it like a normal manual car. Manuals are becomming less common here and most people do not have manual transmissions. When I was younger I tried looking for a driver's school that provided stick shifted cars and I couldn't find one. It's not required to drive a manual here but I believe that it would be great if it was. Some of our sports cars have automatic transmissions like the Corvette has an optional one, A Ford Mustang V6 has auto, but if you want the GT with a V8 you'll only get a 5 speed manual. The Infiniti G35 now G37 has an auto or manual, same with the Nissan 350Z, but with the automatics you get less horsepower and slower acceleration. Some of our Ferraris have semi-automatics which do not have the clutch. But the point is, why can't we learn or at lease try driving a manual car like a lot of the Europeans? We would have more experience with driving different types of cars probably and with manuals we would have better performance, better gas mileage, and maybe not as many transmission problems except for wrong shifting and replacing the clutch every few years. If you guys have a lot of experience with manual transmissions, why can't we?