Why treadmills have emergency shutoffs

I had therapy today with Shane and he added some more exercises to my routine. Some are to strengthen my right leg, some are to increase my walking stamina, some are to improve my gait, and some are to strengthen and stretch my torso now that I have a little more flexibility from the doctor. One of the things he wants me to do is walk on a treadmill. Nothing fancy, just walk. Since a treadmill is constantly moving backwards, Shane says walking on it is a little different than walking normally. You have work a little hard to maintain a consistent pace. For those of us that walk like drunken sailors, weaving back and forth to maintain our balance, that means I have to work hard to keep up. Normally, if I get off balance, I will naturally take a step to one side to compensate. On a treadmill, I can't do that because I would get behind. So that was my mission, start walking, increase the pace until it gets challenging, and then walk for a few minutes.

So, tonight, during my regularly scheduled time, I went to the BYU gym to do my workout. At first I tried walking on the treadmill while holding onto the bars. Of course, that is pretty easy and doesn't require a lot of balance. So after a while I let go and started walking on my own power. I got myself up to about 2.5 miles/hour and I walked for about a minute. Then I took a step with my right leg and didn't get my toe up enough. Of course, that made me stumble a little. Unfortunately, on a treadmill you don't have time to stumble. So I grabbed the bars. I caught myself to keep from falling, but my legs were still on the treadmill and moving backwards at a speed of 2.5 miles/hour. Soon enough my feet reached the end of the treadmill and fell off and I found myself hanging on in a superman position over the treadmill.

As I held on, I noticed right in front of my nose was a little magnet with a tether and instructions saying: "Emergency shutoff, attach lanyard when in use." The idea is that if you fall like that or get behind, the magnet pulls off and shuts off the treadmill. Because most people are too cool and too coordinated for such things, the lanyard had been wrapped around the bar to keep it out of the way; so I hadn't noticed it.

I managed to step up onto the sides of the treadmill and walk my way back up into a standing position. I stopped the treadmill and then looked around to see how many other people in the gym were laughing at me. Fortunately, most people had already had their laugh and moved on by the time I looked around, so I can pretend that no one noticed. Needless to say, I decided that it would be less embarrassing to clip the uncool lanyard to my shirt than to offer a repeat performance. Fortunately, the next 3 minutes went off without a hitch. The good news is that I made it for a total of about 4 minutes on the treadmill at a pace of about 2.5 miles/hour. Nothing dramatic, but it seemed like good progress to me. And remember, that was without holding on, or using a cane or a walker. And if my math skills are as good as they ought to be after 6 years, that means I walked almost 900 feet all on my own.