Printed or not, owners manuals are required by law and everyone who has passed a drivers test should be aware of their existence. People are simply lazy, overconfident, and don't bother to read the big book.
The "big book" for my decade-old car is 387 pages. A few pages are dog-eared-- like the handwritten radio reset code-- but if there's a note in there about my headlights... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Well, they are small pages. And I don't expect everyone to read every page... but at least be familiar with all of the buttons, controls, and indicators which the driver is expected to operate.
