I guess I'm one of those "foolhardy" people. I use only the throttle and trim or the manually operated switch on the side of the plane. Have since the beginnng a very long time ago. I did have linkage come apart once but I charged my batteies before I flew and simply flew the plane until the engine died and landed it. 25 minutes and having a battery die says something about the owner of a plane. The plane should not have been flying if the battery could not outlast a tank of gas. Don't blame a crashed plane on an engine running longer than the battery could fly the plane. Blame that on a stupid owner. If an ignition battery dies the plane becomes a glider. Gliders fly without engines every day. If you choose to do low hovers and other types of flight where you can't trade airspeed for altitude you simply assumed a much greater risk of loss. Accept it and live with the decision.

I've killed the engine of a plane in flight having a choke servo twice. Both times it was the same plane. A 2.6m Compy belonging to a friend. He uses Futaba, I use JR, so the switch assignments are different. So are trim functions if left in the original manufacturer assignments. The second time the choke control had been moved to a different switch, one I don't normally use, so when I bumped the switch it killed the engine. Both times the plane was successfully dead sticked in for a landing. I've never accidentally killed an engine using throttle control. I do not like to fly his planes because he uses optional engine kills. I'm always nervous when doing so because of the choke servo.

If a situation becomes dire enough I can crash a plane. One should be prepared to do that at any time should the most severe situations occur. I can hit down elevator on a take off or landing roll to kill a prop and engine. Same applies to a low power situation. If you don't know how to fly a plane to a landing under power and maintain control you should still be flying a basic trainer. The condition is nothing more complicated than the basic touch and go. A working or dead engine does not steer the plane, so having it running or off does not protect a crowd. Flight surface controls, restraining the plane during the starting sequence, and safe taxi procedures do that. Toss in range checks, battery checks, equipment pre-flight, and other standard safety procedures and 99.9% of problems are eliminated before an engine is started.

If one elects to use multiple means of stopping an engine in flight that's all well and good, but to state that someone is "foolhardy" if they do not is both arrogant and single minded imo. I'll decide for myself the quantity of redundant systems (if any) I'll install on an aircraft. I will not permit the paranoia of others to effect my decisions.