Acer Aspire A517-51G What is the purpose of the SWG1 safety switch?

Textbook

Hello all!

I have an Acer Aspire A517-51G-54GK , but this applies to other models that also have this switch. I was experiencing an issue with my laptop where, only while on battery, the laptop would abruptly hard power off. The cause is a so-called “safety switch” , SWG1, located underneath the removable RAM cover on the underside of the laptop. This is a normally-open, spring-closed switch that is “pressed down” by a post/pad on the memory cover of the case. I was finally able to reliably reproduce my random shutdown issue by going on battery and then prying up on the RAM cover to deactivate the switch, and the laptop would immediately power off. It took several days of searching to find this issue, which was reported by others here as well.

Example:

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/604490/acer-aspire-a515-51g-laptop-power-button-is-not-working

The switch can be seen here:

What is the purpose of this switch? Why did Acer decide that if a memory cover is removed to cut off power to the motherboard? It seems like a really stupid / anti-consumer design choice and I cannot think of any good reason to have it. If anything, in my case and apparently others, all it has done has created another point of failure with no obvious upside. Am I missing something here?

[Edited the thread to add model name to the title]

StevenGen

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/682232/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-swg1-safety-switch

That switch is to reset the battery and has access from the underside of the laptop with a paperclip