A handrail is an agreement that balance should not have to be perfect.

A handrail is an agreement that people should not have to be perfect. It exists because balance fails, attention lapses, and steps are misjudged, and rather than asking everyone to be reliable, it makes reliability unnecessary. That is a decent model for how to build almost anything.

Look at where you are demanding perfection from yourself or others when a handrail would do. A reminder, a checklist, a second pair of eyes, a system that catches the ordinary lapse. Designing for the fallible version of a person is not lowering a standard; it is the only approach that produces consistent results from real people.