The Yamaha is a touring bike, & you can still downshift without any problems, just don't over rev the thing till your sitting on it though.
I can see some merit to the idea, I'll pull the "Old fart" card here, I can remember the howels of derision when bikes started being made without a kickstarter, "How do you start the bike if its got a flat battery?". Tacho's where viewed as "novelties" but not on real bikes, fairings meant you where either a "Tourer" or "Gay", cos only real men loved to get bugs smashed in their face. The introduction of a single (mono) rear shock? no way it would work. ABS, Anti dive forks & Tubelss tyres? (Farkin pooftas) Anyway, wot I'm saying is that, as bike become more sophisticated & electronics become more reliable, then were going to get more stuff that makes riding better. Some new stuff is destined for the "Bin", Yamaha once brought out a tourer with a weird front suspension set up, it worked, but no one trusted it enough to buy the thing. Its a Brave New World.

 

Going to give you a different slant on the story and maybe even a different perspective on the use of paddle shifters SGT Kelvis Longstreet (no kidding, that is his name) lost his leg toa IED. But they have not quite mastered a prosthesis that works well enough for shifting to his or my knowledge. He looked at the FJ because it was one of the few bikes available with a paddle shifter. So love or hate the device with this type of injuries coupled with the fact that there are a lot of young servicemen who have this type of injury that have ridden most of their life I see them becoming more widely available or I hope they will be

 

I went from 100% against to 100% for with this thought. Very good point.

 

+1

 

They already have this. Its called an air shift and its a air shock that is attatched to your shifter and when you press the button it will up shift for you. Alot of drag racers use them.