Kill Switch

Ever have something just spring out of nowhere? That’d be me while I was at the gym the other day running on the treadmill. It’s an hour long cardio-dedication, so I’m prone to let my mind wander.  I see a lot of people listen to favorite music on their IPod’s to pass the time while they run, but for me that is just an attractive nuisance; enough of a distraction to get me stumbling and then I lose my balance.  The idea of me tumbling off the treadmill sober would be just too humiliating for me to get my ego around; so I don’t temp fate.  Anyway, so as I was observing the universe around me I happened to look down and saw this huge three-inch diameter red STOP button. Immediately I thought ‘kill switch’ and I knew what it obviously did; give clumsy guys like me a ghost of a chance to right themselves before the great-fall. The kill switch, also known as an e-stop, was originally designed as a security mechanism used to shut off a device in an emergency situation. Pretty straight forward actually, when time is of the essences taking many steps would not meet the need.  Because normal shut-down switches or procedures do so in an orderly fashion without damaging the equipment; a kill switch is designed and configured to completely abort the operations at all cost in an immediate manner (so that panicking or even impaired users can operate it). Most importantly, the obviousness of it is clearly to assist any untrained operator or even a bystander who just might become the hero of the day how to stop the machine; how decent. 

   Now I got all of that from reading up on Kill Switches, but the really juicy dessert of it all was this part:  Kill switches are featured especially often as part of mechanisms whose normal operation or foreseeable misuse may cause injury or death; designers who include such switches consider damage to or destruction of the mechanism to be an acceptable cost of preventing that injury or death.  So I figured that they KNOW the device is dangerous by installing the Kill Switch, an admission of guilt to me, that they are threatening their clients. Ah, implied is an effort for protection should a lawsuit by those who humiliate themselves in demonstrating they are idiots with a concessional effort to prevent excessive damage and or death at their own hands.  From a purely in-the-other-guys-shoes point of view as well as being heavily self-serving, I would think that the survival of the victim would not be in your best interest. I mean they couldn’t sue you if they were dead right?

  But mine is a quirky mind, I was told so at the last party I attended.  I’m not sure if that was meant to charm me or subtly tell me to move along the buffet line.  I didn’t need help in that department, I know I can be a danger to myself.  But that’s ok, because I learned a long time ago that I’ve a sporting chance with anything that has a kill switch on it; near as I can get to a mommy holding my hand crossing the street.