A kill switch, also known as an e-stop, is a security mechanism used to shut off a device in an emergency situation in which it cannot be shut down in the usual manner. Unlike a normal shut-down switch/procedure, which shuts down all systems in an orderly fashion and turns the machine off without damaging it, a kill switch is designed and configured to a) completely abort the operation at all costs and b) be operable in a manner that is quick, simple (so that even a panicking user with impaired executive function can operate it), and, usually, c) be obvious even to an untrained operator or a bystander. Many kill switches feature a removable barrier or other protection against accidental activation (e.g., a plastic cover that must be lifted or glass that must be broken).
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.
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Famous quotes containing the words kill and/or switch:
“Does he who loves someone on account of beauty really love that person? No, for smallpox, which will kill beauty without killing the person, will cause him to love the person no more. And if one loves me for my judgment, for my memory, he does not love me, for I can lose these qualities without losing myself. Where, then, is this myself, if it be neither in the body nor in the soul?”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“Uncritical semantics is the myth of a museum in which the exhibits are meanings and the words are labels. To switch languages is to change the labels.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)