Ha. That's a sorta-common feature here, I think, usually used when the reverse gear is in a straight line shift from one of the driving gears, so you can't accidentally drop into reverse while trying to go down a gear.
Ironically, one of the things I found hard to get used to in the US was driving an automatic - I wasn't used to not having a clutch (threw out my rhythm completely) and the lack of control over switching gears was really frustrating, especially when pulling into traffic or driving on hills.
