Chuck,
I think that supports your original premise of never acting too quickly. I've always phrased it as "fast hands kill," but it's the same thing.
One of my pet peeves, if you will, is hearing someone say "but that's the way I was taught." It makes one wonder if they were taught to jump off the proverbial bridge, would they do it? My inevitable response is "But, what have you learned?"
Simple things...in an engine-out situation, for example, will a student attempt to fly a downwind, base, and final to the forced landing site simply because the student's never done anything else? Or will the student act to do whatever is necessary to put the airplane down safely? I've seen too many who feel that they can only act within the "box" that they were taught, never thinking outside the box.
Over the years I've had to grab pilot's hands when they attempted to shut down the wrong engine, following a failure. Once, in a heavily loaded PB4Y on the way out to a fire...bad time to be shutting down a second engine. Fast hands kill...acting out of instinct rather than thinking...there just aren't that many things that need to be done quickly in an airplane. In the C-130, when we had an engine fire indication (which occasionally happened), we sat on our hands for a ten count, made a 90 degree turn, then waited another ten or so before evaluating. Optical sensors in the nacelles would pick up sun reflections and give false warnings. No sense shutting down something unnecessarily or rushing to create a problem when one didn't exist. And so it goes.
Students are taught after an engine failure to land straight ahead if they haven't reached a target altitude. This is common sense and proper, to a point. Attempting to turn back to the runway too low can result on focusing on the runway and a control loss. However, I've talked to more than a few pilots who felt they couldn't turn a few degrees this way or that, even 90 degrees, to miss a building, tree, or other obstacle, or to reach a nice open field to one side of the departure end of the runway. The student was so focused on doing only what was taught that the student was shackled into thinking only along that track. Anything else would be inconceivable. This isn't right.
During a parachute jump some years ago I had a total malfunction involving the main bridle and pilot chute entangled around my arm. I had few jumps at the time, and training involving a malfunction was straight-forward. Cut away the main and deploy the reserve parachute. However, while my parachute had started to deploy, the actual parachute wasn't off my back yet; it was still in the pack tray. Cutting away would have meant even more material floating around above my back (loose risers) as I attempted to deploy the reserve. I automatically reached for the cutaway handle, but stopped to think, realized it not only wouldn't help but could hurt, and simply deployed the reserve, instead.
On another occasion, I experienced a stuck pilot chute. The pilot chute must be removed from a pouch and hand thrown, and it deploys the main parachute. A new pocket had been sewn for it by a rigger, and the pocket was fine on the ground, but pulled tight and trapped the pilot chute When the rig was worn during the jump. I was unable to remove the pilot chute. I was already low when I discovered this fact, and as I pulled on it, I made one more effort at a good tug on the handle, and tumbled over onto my back. Altimeters don't read correctly on your back, and fall rate changes. I arched and returned face to earth, to find myself very rapidly closing on the ground. I still had the pilot chute handle in one hand, and suddenly had a very clear recollection of the fatality reports I've read over the years...so many cases of witnesses seeing a jumper go all the way to his death desperately tugging on a stuck handle or even part of his jump harness. I realized I was becoming that person, abandoned the handle, and deployed the reserve...and hit the ground shortly thereafter. Taking the time to think, to choose the right decision, may save one's life. Being too quick to make the wrong choice can kill, but the decision as to which path to take always rests with the one in in the hotseat.