Counter-example as SSCCE:

use strict;
use warnings;

use LWP::UserAgent;
use Test::More tests => 1;

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new ();
$ua->timeout (5);
my $start = time;
my $res = $ua->get ('https://www.sco.com:666/');
my $duration = time - $start;
cmp_ok ($duration, '<', 10, 'Short timeout triggered');
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