In Germany nearly everyone can drive manual. Used to be that if you didn’t learn how to drive manual in driving school, you weren’t allowed to drive manual with your license.

31,Sweden

Yes, and I prefer a manual car to an automatic. It keeps me a lot more dialed in while driving.

I can, not well, but I can. damn hill starts.

23, US. Yes, but I find them pointless for daily driver cars. Modern automatics are more fuel efficient and just make more sense because they’re much easier to operate and less annoying in stop and go traffic.

They’re great for off-roading and racing, but outside of those use cases automatics are just better.

My car has a manual transmission. I learned to drive on a manual transmission. I prefer it. When I drive a car with automatic transmission, I step on its nonexistent clutch.

Yes.

In Europe you basically have to be handicapped to not learn to drive manual. Most people get the manual driving license because it allows you to drive both, whereas the automatic one doesn’t.

Manual transmission was and often still is cheaper, often cheaper to repair, often more reliable, often uses less fuel, and in cheap and less powerful cars the combination is often better. Because there are so many manual cars here, including at rental places, it’s a no brainer to learn to drive manual.

This being said, that’s changing. Also, less and less young people are getting a driving license due to affordability and cars no longer being the status symbol they once were.

31, Germany, I can’t drive at all. City kid.

Yes. Europe. We pretty much all do. Automatics are becoming a bit more common in recent years, but 90% of cars here are still manual. Especially the old beat-up cars we learn to drive on are all manual. And if by chance you learned on an automatic, and pass your driver’s test on automatic, it says so on your driver’s licence and I think you’re not actually allowed to drive/rent manual cars.

Of course, 28, French. 99,99% of people here drive manual (or at least know how to).

UAE, mid 20s and I know how to drive a manual but went with an automatic.

Least american centric lemmy thread.

Poland. It comes by default.

Yes, unless you want to still have an engine, then no.

24, always driven manual, EU.
From my experience most people in the EU can or at least could: This is because many (if not all, not sure) countries make a distinction between manual and automatic licenses (see e.g. https://www.learn-automatic.com/qualified/automatic-driving-licence/).
I.e. if you want to drive manual, you have to take the test manual, but if you take the test on manual transmission, you are allowed to drive automatics as well.

Germany, 25, yup

This thread is an amusing display of sample bias. Only people that want to respond yes and brag about it bothering to respond.

In reality only about 2/3rds of people in the US can drive stick and almost no one owns manual cars.

I’ve never driven a manual car. I’ve had people be like “You can’t drive manual?!” and then I would respond “So are you going to teach me?” The answer is always No, of course not, not in their car (assuming they even owned a manual, which none do anymore). My parents had manual cars but sold them 10+ years before having me.

I understand how a clutch works. It wouldn’t be difficult to learn. But what reason or motivation is there to learn when almost no cars are manual? They total something like 2% of new car sales. If you’re buying something like a 718 GT4 RS or a 911 GT3 RS for maximum driving engagement that’s great, but those cars are priced for the 1% of the 1%.

Even if you had a fun car, which I do, the drive to work is stop-and-go, roads are full, even the fun country backroads are filled with traffic on weekends, forests are burned down, gas is eye-watteringly expensive if you have a slightly performant vehicle. The time to have fun driving cars was 40 years ago.