By your own admission you’ve never seen the “shelf” you’re referring to and if you had you wouldn’t describe it as such. Although there IS a shelf immediately in front. It’s a few centimetres wide and, by good design, curved in profile making it hard to stow anything (which makes me wonder was, perhaps, his camera strap looped onto the sidestick to keep it there??)
Even then the unwise positioning was only one component of several negligent acts which caused this near-catastrophe. So if you are saying the hue and cry is undeserved I would take issue. Perhaps you would make a point of actually looking at the area before branding it a design fault?