25 Safety Measures That Ended Up Backfiring

‘Binding a broken rib’
25 Safety Measures That Ended Up Backfiring

As anyone with generalized anxiety disorder can tell you, being overly concerned with danger isn’t always a good thing. Sure, you don’t want to be one of those Russian teens who hangs out on the tip of a construction crane, but you also have to be able to go to the grocery store without worrying if an air-conditioning unit is going to fall on your head.

In fact, sometimes, an overabundance of caution can actually backfire, especially when it’s applied without full knowledge of the problem at hand. Even scientific and societal attempts to keep people safe can kick off a whole new problem. Look up antibiotic resistance if you want a particularly terrifying example, which is just one of many offered up by Redditors in this highly unsettling thread.

HeyYouGuyyyyyyy 1y ago Thalidomide. It is a drug that was prescribed (in Germany, I think) to pregnant mothers to help with nausea. It caused terrible deformities in the children - - arms or legs that were almost stubs, with flipperlike things instead of hands or feet.
Zip_Zoopity_Bop 1y ago When the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew up and dumped crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the chemical Corexit was used to disperse it. Turns out it was about 10 times worse than the crude oil itself and also caused the oil to just sink to the bottom of the Gulf, where it poisoned the entire food web.
Oknight 1y ago Edited 1y ago I've got a story. So I rented a car and I'm driving with the dash display map showing me where to go since I'm on unfamiliar, fast, two lane winding roads and a complicated route. Suddenly the screen blanks out with a massive red message WARNING with a long small print message underneath. I try to read what it says, nearly driving off the road, but finally get to where I can pull over to read it. In small letters under the giant red WARNING it reads. Taking your eyes off the road for
ThadisJones 1y ago Safety box cutters where the user has to keep pressure on the button to keep the blade extended, otherwise it automatically retracts back into the handle. People end up straining awkwardly to hold them, and focus more on keeping the blade open open rather than what they're trying to cut, so there's more accidents.
4-me . 1y ago Binding a broken rib, which can cause pneumonia so they no longer do that.
red_ball_express 1y ago Telling parents not to expose young children to peanuts because it might cause a peanut allergy. This meant young children were not exposed to peanuts at all and later in life when they did come across peanuts their bodies thought it was a foreign object and became allergic.
. 1y ago . Edited 1y ago Overvigilance in forest fire protection leads to buildup of burnable materials and hotter more destructive fires were the result
ofnuts . 1y ago Password rules. Many reduce the number of possible passwords instead of increasing it. 6.1K ...
SillyFlyGuy . 1y ago Prop 65 in California. When everything has a warning, nothing has a warning. It's causes fatigue and now people ignore even legitimate important information.
Cymorg0001 a 1y ago That time a UK swimming pool forced a one child one adult policy, meaning mums with more than 1 kid couldn't go at the kids hours during the week when the dad's were at work. The intention was to prevent drownings (the pool had never had a drowning). The result was kids didn't learn to swim and drowned at other swimming venues.
only 1 1y ago Safety nozzles on jerry cans in the US. Requires a minimum of 3 hands to make work even a little bit, and fuel is still spilling everywhere. Such a waste.
Kremidas 1y ago There was a law passed to make CEO pay public. It was meant to promote transparency and accountability. CEO pay has since skyrocketed because now they compete with other CEO salaries.
Breathalyzers in bars. Meant to show people how intoxicated they were so they would not drive. Instead people got more drunk because they would try and see who could blow the highest.
sudomatrix . . . 1y ago the war on drugs
RomusLupos a 1y ago Edited 1y ago The Patriot Act. The insane amount of privacy invasion and extra powers that were granted to Federal and Local Law Enforcement that have never been rescinded far outweighs any good (read: none) that the Patriot Act was supposed to deliver.
Truly_Fake_Username 1y ago Fat free food. It was a huge health craze, low fat, no fat, get the fat out of food! But, fat added taste. Food without it was bland. So the food companies loaded up sugar, to restore taste. And sugar is much unhealthier than fat ever was.
David1000k . 1y ago Fire resistant clothing (FRC). Worn by construction workers in Greenfield Projects, resulting in heat exhaustion and heat strokes in areas where flash fires wouldn't occur anyway.
DRKMSTR . 1y ago Airbags killed more kids than it saved when they first came out. That's why most cars now have seat weight sensors that disable the front airbag(s) if you're below a certain weight.
wilderlowerwolves . 1y ago Antibacterial products in routine use. They're fine for people with compromised immune systems, but their over- and misuse has contributed to resistant bacteria.
badb-crow 1y ago Abstinence only education. Turns out teens have more unprotected sex when you teach them as little about sex as possible, and kids who don't know anything about sex and boundaries are more vulnerable to child predators.
WWBSkywalker . 1y ago Putting babies on their stomach to reduce incidence of cold and flu. That led to a material uptick in SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) in many western countries who adopted this practice. Most Asian countries rightly ignored this advice.
INDIANA ODR downshift_rocket . 1y ago Red-Light Cameras. They actually increased accidents because drivers would panic and stop short of the light.
Early_Cap_8906 . 1y ago Extremely bright headlights on cars these days.
ImReverse_Giraffe e 1y ago WW2 survivorship bias and armoring planes. They looked at all the planes that came back and saw where they were shot up. They started to armor those parts of the planes, but didn't see any effect I the amount of surviving planes. Until someone realized that the planes were surviving. They needed to armor the areas that weren't shot, because that's where fatal shots happen. The planes that were shot in those areas didn't return.
CYHilton 1y ago Banning kegs of beer on my college campus for tailgates. Everyone started bulk buying cheap vodka instead. A student got a head injury doing a keg-stand and they wanted to make things safer. Stupid college kids are better off drinking light beer than they are slugging grape flavored shitty vodka.

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