Although you're joking, I just want to say that avoiding needless work isn't laziness, it's efficiency. Maybe those are two sides of the same coin, but I could equally say people in the UK are being needlessly inefficient.

Not just for themselves, but for others - automatics have had better fuel efficiency (less pollution) for years now.

We could even go further and say that needlessly polluting to improve the "feel" of driving is immoral.

Yup this is what I always say. Using modern conveniences doesn't equal laziness. There's a bunch of stuff that cars do for you automatically that you wouldn't call laziness for not doing it yourself: traction control, abs, power steering, using a choke to start the car etc. I lump changing gear into this bucket.

why not walk, with that argument