diff --git a/src/Event/Http/FpmHandler.php b/src/Event/Http/FpmHandler.php
index cca598fd4..2a9747a47 100644
--- a/src/Event/Http/FpmHandler.php
+++ b/src/Event/Http/FpmHandler.php
@@ -93,7 +93,11 @@ public function start(): void
     public function stop(): void
     {
         if ($this->fpm && $this->fpm->isRunning()) {
-            $this->fpm->stop(2);
+            // Give it less than a second to stop (500ms should be plenty enough time)
+            // this is for the case where the script timed out: we reserve 1 second before the end
+            // of the Lambda timeout, so we must kill everything and restart FPM in 1 second.
+            // Note: Symfony will first try sending SIGTERM (15) and then SIGKILL (9)
+            $this->fpm->stop(0.5);
             if ($this->isReady()) {
                 throw new Exception('PHP-FPM cannot be stopped');
             }
@@ -122,12 +126,23 @@ public function handleRequest(HttpRequestEvent $event, Context $context): HttpRe
 
             $response = $this->client->readResponse($socketId, $timeoutDelayInMs);
         } catch (TimedoutException $e) {
-            // Send a SIGUSR2 signal to PHP-FPM
-            // That causes FPM to reload all workers, which allows us to cleanly stop the FPM worker that is stuck in a timeout/waiting state.
-            // A (intentional) side-effect is that it causes all worker logs buffered by FPM to be written to stderr.
-            // Without that, all logs written by the PHP script are never written to stderr (and thus never logged to CloudWatch).
-            // This takes a bit of time (a few ms), but it's still faster than rebooting FPM entirely.
-            posix_kill($this->fpm->getPid(), SIGUSR2);
+            echo "The PHP script timed out. Bref will now restart PHP-FPM to start from a clean slate and flush the PHP logs.\nTimeouts can happen for example when trying to connect to a remote API or database, if this happens continuously check for those.\nIf you are using a RDS database, read this: https://bref.sh/docs/environment/database.html#accessing-the-internet\n";
+
+            /**
+             * Restart FPM so that the blocked script is 100% terminated and that its logs are flushed to stderr.
+             *
+             * - "why restart FPM?": if we don't, the previous request continues to execute on the next request
+             * - "why not send a SIGUSR2 signal to FPM?": that was a promising approach because SIGUSR2
+             *   causes FPM to cleanly stop the FPM worker that is stuck in a timeout/waiting state.
+             *   It also causes all worker logs buffered by FPM to be written to stderr (great!).
+             *   This takes a bit of time (a few ms), but it's faster than rebooting FPM entirely.
+             *   However, the downside is that it doesn't "kill" the previous request execution:
+             *   it merely stops the execution of the line of code that is waiting (e.g. "sleep()",
+             *   "file_get_contents()", ...) and continues to the next line. That's super weird!
+             *   So SIGUSR2 isn't a great solution in the end.
+             */
+            $this->stop();
+            $this->start();
 
             // Throw an exception so that:
             // - this is reported as a Lambda execution error ("error rate" metrics are accurate)
@@ -136,7 +151,7 @@ public function handleRequest(HttpRequestEvent $event, Context $context): HttpRe
             throw new Timeout($timeoutDelayInMs);
         } catch (Throwable $e) {
             printf(
-                "Error communicating with PHP-FPM to read the HTTP response. A root cause of this can be that the Lambda (or PHP) timed out, for example when trying to connect to a remote API or database, if this happens continuously check for those! Bref will restart PHP-FPM now. Original exception message: %s %s\n",
+                "Error communicating with PHP-FPM to read the HTTP response. Bref will restart PHP-FPM now. Original exception message: %s %s\n",
                 get_class($e),
                 $e->getMessage()
             );
diff --git a/tests/Handler/PhpFpm/php-fpm.conf b/tests/Handler/PhpFpm/php-fpm.conf
index 4976dece1..de1f6759f 100644
--- a/tests/Handler/PhpFpm/php-fpm.conf
+++ b/tests/Handler/PhpFpm/php-fpm.conf
@@ -18,6 +18,3 @@ catch_workers_output = yes
 ; Limit the number of core dump logs to 1 to avoid filling up the /tmp disk
 ; See https://github.com/brefphp/bref/issues/275
 rlimit_core = 1
-
-; Very short timeout to be able to test timeouts without having a very long test suite
-request_terminate_timeout = 1
diff --git a/tests/Handler/PhpFpm/timeout.php b/tests/Handler/PhpFpm/timeout.php
index 8d476703e..fb306017c 100644
--- a/tests/Handler/PhpFpm/timeout.php
+++ b/tests/Handler/PhpFpm/timeout.php
@@ -2,4 +2,9 @@
 
 error_log('This is a log message');
 
-sleep((int) ($_GET['timeout'] ?? 10));
+$timeout = (int) ($_GET['timeout'] ?? 10);
+$result = sleep($timeout);
+
+if ($result && $timeout > 0) {
+    throw new Exception('The execution continued after sleep was interrupted!');
+}