The answer is SAFETY, not helath and safety YOUR safety.
This arrangement has been in industry for at least 20 years and the lathe mentioned is a light industrail lathe so you would expect it to conform to these standards.
Take a lathe like my TOS, again light industrial with a 40" or 1 metre between centres.
This one, being a throwback to the east European designs does have the forward reverse clutch on the headstock.
However one of the first jobs I did with this, threading on the end of a long shaft meant I was on my limits to watch the tool at the tailstock end and work the clutch.
Result one broken tool and wrecked job but could have been far more serious.
I got away with this by cranking the clutch lever so it was reachable from the tailstock end.
By big TOS, two metres between centres had the start / stop / reverse on the carriage as per industy standard.
Without which it would have been impossible to use.
Just to reinforce this idea of it being industr standr look at this pic from the lathes.uk web site

dated 1968 and has a carraige mounted clutch.

Harrison M300 dated 1986.
Personally I'd be more worried about someone asking how to start a machine when it's obvious they haven't read the book or had experiance of that model.