Timeouts
A system may trigger a deadman’s switch if a process doesn’t complete after a certain time.
Automated Systems
In software, some automated systems may have a health monitor in place and may trigger a deadman’s switch if the system enters an unhealthy state.
Emergency stop
In cases where a lot of errors may be happening a deadman’s switch may be used to kill the processes to prevent even more errors from happening. Similar to a Circuit Breaker.