I am not terribly old, but my dad insisted I drive stick (he grew up with a manual crank-start car in India), and all of my cars were manual until I went EV. I think I was far more attentive driving a manual, and that’s carried over but slowly fading. Just the awareness you need of your driving situation —- eg do I need to pass and does that require me to downshift? —- made me far more vigilant than I otherwise would have been.
