Extremely annoying indeed, on various occasions have I seen team members say in group chat "A whole day wasted, hurriedly set up a recipe and didn't notice power was still set to Auto.."

Yes it is yet another tiny thing to remember, and there are so many of them, even if you click low it does't take until you wiggle something.
I agree the default should be low. It can't do any damage.
It is even more annoying to create a track to explore a different path, check that it is on low visually, make a delicate change, start a gentle wiggle and have the backbone stiffen because it switches back to auto and you have to ferret about with undo, and reconstruct the visual idea you had when you decided to start a new track; or just go and do something entirely more rewarding.