@tubetime

I used to be in contract manufacturing of maximum-reliability electronics. Cut traces happen more than you think.

In our case (pick one) (not exhaustive):

1. The client made a change and we had older boards.

2. Experience in the field necessitated a circuit modification, but changing the board design would mean going through gov't approvals again.

3. Different configurations of the same product would get different traces cut rather than making seperate boards for each model.