In many cases, it would be very convenient to have the system not react immediately to an "OB LB" status, but wait a little to make sure it doesn't go away in a couple of seconds. For example:

• When performing a manual periodical discharge of the battery in order to prevent sulfatation and correct the estimated on-battery time (if we had a few seconds to turn the power back on after it goes into the alarm stare, then we wouldn't have to go through all the trouble of disabling the whole NUT first);
• When the estimated on-battery time is less than "alert" time, the whole system shuts down during an automatic periodical UPS self-test. There is a workaround for that, but what if you did not expect the battery to be that bad, or if your UPS miscalculated something? Not to mention specifying a "panic timeout" is simply easier (and more reliable) than doing the procedure of overriding the UPS values described in the manuals.

See this thread in the mailing lists for more info and extremely complicated workarounds that could be solved easily:
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/nut-upsuser/2016-September/010260.html