I am now driving the first car I have ever owned that is not a standard transmission. It's funny because I think "standard" is really automatic at this point, but my next car will probably be a stick again. I like it because there's is more control/generally people that drive stick drive better/safer than automatic car drivers as you actually have to know how to drive to drive a manual car.
I wonder if accident rates would drop if everyone had a stick shift? The impetus for this post was this one: Harder to text while working the shift.generally people that drive stick drive better/safer than automatic car drivers
this makes sense to me. Like tacocat said above:
I drive a stick. I prefer it as it seems to keep me concentrated on the road.
I think part of it also is that when you learn to drive stick you actually have to learn to drive the car and pay attention to what it does/is doing, whereas you could stick a baby in an auto and if it could reach the pedals, it could make the car move.