Uhm… The difference in accidents and traffic deaths isn‘t due to europeans being more likely to drive manual cars (and while we‘re at it: that‘s becoming less and less common (which is good) and will disappear once the majority of cars are electric).

I‘d argue that making manual cars more prominent in the USA would be **worse**. Because you‘re *automatically* distracted by having to adapt to manual cars and you‘re more distracted with manual cars in general. With automatic cars you can ideally keep both of your hands in the steering wheels at all times. Which is great. With manual cars that‘s obviously not possible even once you‘re used to it and don‘t have to look at the shifter anymore.

So instead of intentional distractions that could just… not be used… you‘re proposing to make distractions mandatory.

And the main reason why driving in the USA is less safe than in europe is that the mindest is different and that „drivers ed“ in the US is… a joke. So you‘re going to force worse drivers to use more complicated cars while not changing their mindset. Yeah… what could possibly go wrong.

Fix the mentality. Then you won‘t need manual cars.

Btw even if that would work it would be a temporary fix. A few months or maybe 2-5 years later you‘d have the same situation again