[Imprecate]

Modern cars make so much power that you really don't need to shift unless you're accelerating from a stop, in traffic, or on curvy/hilly backroads. I can comfortably drive in 6th gear between 55 and 100+ mph including passing, going up hills, and so on. Obviously it's not the ideal gear in all of those cases, but if you're feeling lazy it works.

I would guess manuals are involved in more accidents and more fatal accidents, at least in the US, since the only people who buy them here in great numbers are performance enthusiasts, frugal bastards, and diesel truck drivers. Some enthusiasts are responsible and don't push their cars on public roads, but many aren't. If there is a difference, it's probably small. My parents have two of the same car, one in manual and one in automatic, and they never mentioned a large difference in insurance cost. Actuaries would charge manual and auto drivers different prices if their risk rates differed.