As a teenager, my brother had a Honda 160. I had a 1965 Ducati scambler, which was right-hand shift, plus a 1-up, 3-down shift pattern, totally backwards from the Honda

My dad took my Ducati out one day. He remembered the shift pattern, but forgot which side. He pulled out of the driveway rather briskly, then went to shift. Instead, he stabbed the brake pedal and locked up the rear wheel as he was still leaned over from pulling out. Luckily, he recovered and didn't go down.

As I recall the left side shifter was deemed safer and that’s when it was changed to match all other motorcycles. A new industry standard. It never bothered me , one unintended shift , then the brain kicks in and gets with the plan , takes a minute getting feet to cooperate. Away we go !

I can’t wait !

Trivia ?

What year did it change ?

1975 is the correct answer.

When I was in flight school, on the first day when we actually got into the cockpit and began to learn to fly, there were about 30 aircraft scattered about on a practice airfield.  Think of all 30 aircraft in the hands of 18-22 year olds who have never laid a hand on a helicopter.  Watch the video of this dude and multiply that by 30X.  It was a giant Royal clusterf___  that went on for an hour, then the next student would take his turn.  It started all over again.  The redeeming factor for us students were the instructors who took their life in their hands by training a bunch of newbies.  The only difference between us and the crazy dude in this video is we had good instructors to save our butts when we tried to kill ourselves.
To solo a helicopter required 10-20 hours of flight time before they released us to scare ourselves to death as we made 3 rounds of the traffic pattern to qualify a successful solo flight.  No one died, we cheated death again.

It was a 30 ring circus.