Interesting. I've observed at a number of telescopes and they all have a big red STOP button that will shut down the telescope immediately. I've only had to use it once. The telescope was poorly designed and it was possible to run it into its hard limit (you could basically run it into the ground). If you do that you have to stop it because the tracking motors will continue to try to drive the telescope into the ground.
The only exception was the Large Binocular Telescope, which is one of the largest telescopes around (even the largest, depending on how you define it). But there a lot more thought was put into the design so you wouldn't be able to run the telescope into the ground even if you tried. (It also helps that they have a dedicated night assistant whose job it is to point the telescope and make sure that the observers don't do anything stupid.)
The only exception was the Large Binocular Telescope, which is one of the largest telescopes around (even the largest, depending on how you define it). But there a lot more thought was put into the design so you wouldn't be able to run the telescope into the ground even if you tried. (It also helps that they have a dedicated night assistant whose job it is to point the telescope and make sure that the observers don't do anything stupid.)