In the UK, don’t they have separate licenses for automatic and standard transmission cars?
But in all honestly, North America is pretty much the only place where the automotive companies actually profit from selling automatic transmissions. Every other country in the world (disregarding paddle-type performance vehicles), everyone and their dog knows how to drive manual, or even drives manual…
North Americans have it too easy. They want everything done for them… Not everyone, but most. They’re too used to their bare necessities being able to make their lives much simpler that they become uninformed (see, I didn’t say stupid/dumb) about other things available to them (ie. how to drive manual, emergency driving maneuvers, how to survive when the power goes out for so many hours, etc).