Came here to say that. Here in the US I see people driving with their phone in their right hand, which is just not possible with a manual transmission car (and I never saw that in France). It might also explain a bit why so many people drive with a giant cup of coffee: they have a free hand.

This makes sense, give both feet and both hands a role in the driving process and we are forced to pay more attention. Perhaps we need to turn the shifters of automatics into Simon says games where if you lose the pattern you hit a soft rev limiter.