Hmmmmm ... not sure where your terrain is, but San Francisco, a city of VERY steep hills, and any freeway in So Cal during rush hour with stop-and-go traffic, there's constant shifting. I've driven both in sticks all my life ... and still insist on having a manual for my personal car -- my sweetheart's car is an automatic.
In cities especially, a manual helps protect from carjacking and car theft -- most of the hoods that do that kind of thing don't know a clutch pedal from a bag of Fritos.
On very winding, hilly roads, sticks are FAR superior because you use the compression of the engine in down-shifting instead of the brakes to slow down. I often see automatics using their brakes going UP HILL (!!!!) to slow down for curves, which is nuts; for fun, when driving such roads, I challenge myself to use the brakes as little as possible and shift up or down instead. Another great thing about stick shifts is that if the battery goes dead or even if the starter craps out, as long as you've got either a push or a hill to coast down, you can put 'er in second, pop the clutch, and get the engine going!
You steer an automatic. You DRIVE a manual!
Great line! I couldn't agree more. I require all my kids to learn to drive one. You never know when you're going to have to.
I went to Ireland last fall, and that's all they had over there. Drove over 1,000 miles in it. I almost killed my family only one time, driving on the left side of the road. The weird thing was that the shift pattern was the same as over here, even though you do it with your left hand. I would have thought it would be reversed. It was weird pushing the stick away from you to put it in first gear. That was harder for me to get used to than driving on the left side of the road.