sorry, i didn't mean to present it as a honest argument. this guy was pretty much a criminal on the roads. suicidally speeding driver when sober and a drunk driver when drunk.

what i meant to say is that i don't believe a need to overcome distractions makes you a more attentive driver. in my opinion it's better to have less (car operating complexity) to worry about, because then you can - or at least could - focus on the road better(and i have driven manually shifting cars all my life with very few exceptions).

> what i meant to say is that i don't believe a need to overcome distractions makes you a more attentive driver. in my opinion it's better to have less (car operating complexity) to worry about, because then you can - or at least could - focus on the road better

Whether you could matters a lot less than whether you would. As an extreme, your logic would suggest that the "dead man's switch" used on trains would make them less safe.

> and i have driven manually shifting cars all my life with very few exceptions

So if you yourself do the thing you're claiming is less safe, do you actually believe what you're claiming?

tbh, i've only driven an automatic maybe a few hundred kilometers, so my data for comparison is limited. furthermore, my manual and the automatic are not quite the same model, so it's all quite anecdotal. now, the automatic sometimes shifts at an unexpected moment which from a safety standpoint is probably a bigger problem than the concentration. apart from that i think that in most situations there is not difference, but in fiddly edge cases, e.g. low speed city maneuvering with lots of pedestrian traffic and starting on ascents, not having to worry about shifting might help.

as i didn't take part in a controlled experiment i wont claim that, though.