[Penguin]

I enjoy driving a manual transmission car and prefer it to auto or semi auto

There has been research into how manual gears affect your driving safety. It's thought that knowledge of how your car handles in different gears and at different revs lets you react better to scenarios, and also that being aware of your revs while cruising will keep you more attentive at the wheel since you're paying attention to whether to change gear, or engine brake, or brake normally, or change down for more torque, etc etc etc.

What I just said may sound like a load of complicated words to some, but it's more about intuition. You don't have to know the theory to understand how it feels to drive it.

Of course, all of this could just be bullshit and at the end of the day it's far easier to learn how to drive an automatic.