5 along the way. Originally designed by Hall of Fame knifemaker, Ken Onion, Kershaw's SpeedSafe knives flew off the shelves. Today, almost all knife companies offer some sort of assisted opening knife, but none matches the popularity or proven durability of the original. What is SpeedSafe®? SpeedSafe is a patented system that assists the user to smoothly open any SpeedSafe knife with a manual push on the blade's thumb stud or pull back on the flipper. SpeedSafe is built into many of (siehe ).