I don't think you've been deep in car culture or just disregard them as a minority group. This minority would become extremely vocal if manual driving were to be regulated by the government. Insurance incentivization is another matter; they're used to that already.
It started innocuously with mandatory emergency signalling in the instance of a crash, then mandatory reversing cameras, then mandatory lane keeping assistance, auto emergency braking, speed limit indication. Coming soon in Europe is automatic speed limit adherence. Emissions regs have also led to a huge rise in automatic transmissions in Europe.
For very many people the only thing they do to control their car now is turn the wheel and push the accelerator.
"Insurance incentivization" is just an alternate form of regulation, instead using the power of an economic market rather than the power of the police to impose someone's regulatory will.
For some reason, Americans seem to be fine with regulations that come from companies and enforced via economics, but become extremely vocal when there regulations come from legislators.
