Safetyism

[temporal1]

i would add to the OP list: for physical AND mental health

1) able schoolchildren not walking distances multiple times to school daily.
much due to fear of crime targeting children.

instead of sheltering them from the streets, how about cleaning up the streets?

2) not enough outdoor playtime. and work time!
AC may be the #1 contributor.

3) too much food that tastes good.
fast food and processed food tastes good. more disgusting home cooked meals are needed.
viewtopic.php?t=8189

[barnhart]

I remember playing with a friend who was later thrown from a car accident and died. I remember sitting in church observing how many of the old men, born in the 20's and 30's, were missing parts of fingers and hands. My grandfather's brother died at two by ingesting heart medication in a bottle with no safety cap. The good old days before safetyism had their share of pain and loss.

[temporal1]

I remember playing with a friend who was later thrown from a car accident and died. I remember sitting in church observing how many of the old men, born in the 20's and 30's, were missing parts of fingers and hands. My grandfather's brother died at two by ingesting heart medication in a bottle with no safety cap. The good old days before safetyism had their share of pain and loss.

good examples.
i remember life before the polio vaccine. there were NO vaccines.

there was a lot of pain. life was uncertain and dangerous. for all.

preventing all that has obvious advantages.
people who have lived with comparably less fear and pain - are a different type of people.
i have wondered.

[Bootstrap]

I think safety is a good thing—it shows love and care, and it’s often part of wise stewardship.

But sometimes what we call “safety” comes with real costs. And not all safety measures are worth those costs.

Some clearly are:

• Seat belts save thousands of lives for almost no downside.
• Clean water laws prevent disease and save lives long-term.
• Childproof medicine bottles protect kids with little hassle.

Others are more complicated:

• COVID school closures protected some, but also harmed many kids' education and mental health.
• Banning nuclear power feels safe but leads to more deaths from fossil fuel pollution.
• Car seat rules for older kids saved a few dozen lives per year—but may have led to 145,000 fewer births because families couldn’t fit three car seats in one car.

To me, the real problem isn’t seeking safety, that's a good thing. The real problem is when we chase the feeling of safety without asking what it costs or whether it truly helps. We need wisdom more than blanket rules.

[ken_sylvania]

My grandfather's brother died at two by ingesting heart medication in a bottle with no safety cap. The good old days before safetyism had their share of pain and loss.

I'm sort of impressed that he was able to swallow the bottle, but sorry that it cost him his life.

[Ken]

A lot of this discussion comes down to a distinction between involuntary risks and voluntary risks. And frankly in my opinion the government should be much more concerned with regulating the former rather than the latter. What do I mean by that?

Some involuntary risks that threaten our health and safety or that of our children:

Air pollution
Water pollution
Poor or dangerous highway design
Lack of safety standards in cars (crumple zones, anti-lock brakes, etc.)
Contaminated foods (e-coli contaminated lettuce, salmonella contaminated meat, etc)
Lead paint and lead in gasoline
Asbestos in school buildings
Flammable building materials in our homes, apartments, offices, etc.

Some voluntary risks that threaten our health and safety or that of our children:

Horseback riding
Swimming
Eating red meat
Eating processed foods
Choosing to live in a hurricane or flood zone
Sedentary lifestyle
Cosmetic surgeries
Drinking raw milk
Smoking

While there is some overlap between these two categories. I think there is a much more compelling role for government to address the former rather than the latter. Since they are risks that we cannot easily avoid through our own personal actions. They need to be addressed more at a societal level through actual regulation. Whereas voluntary risks are generally better addressed through voluntary methods like education or financial incentives so that people living in a free society can make informed choices. So, for example, cigarette taxes provide a financial incentive to stop smoking (or smoke less) but are not an outright ban. An outright smoking ban would be enormously costly to implement and would greatly increase crime (as happened during prohibition).

That doesn't negate the need for cost benefit analysis in any regulation. But there should be a much higher cost/benefit threshold for regulations addressing voluntary risks compared to involuntary risks. Since voluntary risks are ones that the public can easily avoid through their own private actions, involuntary risks are not. So, for example, I'd rather see my government use its limited resources to address air pollution rather than ban raw milk. I can't choose which air my children breathe but I can choose what kind of milk they drink.

[Wesleyb]

This is an excerpt from the August 2025 issue of The Sword and Trumpet, article in the Newsline's section written by Hans Mast.

I think this well lays out my problem with the unrelenting drive towards safety in America. Because it only considers safety achieved without counting the cost of that achievement. Appropriate risk is beneficial.

Safetyism’s Cost: When Good Intentions Backfire

What if our efforts to stay safe are actualy kiling thousands more people every year than they save? We’ve always been told to “err on the side of safety,” but could that very instinct be causing far greater harm than the dangers we fear most?

Daniel Kahneman argues in Thinking, Fast and Slow that people are inherently poor at understanding relative statistical risk due to the way our minds rely on quick, intuitive judgments rather than careful analysis. That has caused us to engage in some safety efforts that are counterproductive.

Consider car seat laws. Research shows mandating car seats for older children did save about 57 lives in 2017. But that same year, these mandates discouraged an estimated 8,000 births because many vehicles can’t accommodate three car seats, deterring families from having a third child. Since 1980, this unintended result may have led to 145,000 fewer children born.

Research shows that COVID-era school closures, aiming to keep children "safe" caused substantially more harm than good. Children endured unprecedented learning loss, mental health crises, and billions in projected future economic losses, despite being the demographic least at risk from the virus.

Safetyism's impulse also influenced our response to nuclear energy, driving policies dominated by rare but dramatic fears of nuclear disasters like Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011). Yet researchers show that shifting away from nuclear power toward coal, oil, and gas has resulted in vastly greater harm. Per kilowatt-hour, nuclear energy causes far fewer deaths than even the safest fossil fuels. On the other hand, the least safe, coal, kils around 350 times more people than nuclear, primarily through routine polution rather than headline-making accidents.

Germany's nuclear phase-out following Fukushima led directly to increased fossil fuel usage, adding roughly 1,100 premature deaths each year. Japan’s post-Fukushima nuclear shutdown similarly caused thousands of excess deaths due to heightened air polution and costly winter heating. Globally, nuclear power had already prevented about 1.8 million deaths between 1971 and 2009 by displacing fossil fuels. Fear-driven anti-nuclear policies, aimed at preventing extremely rare reactor incidents, have likely resulted in tens of thousands of additional deaths already—and milions more could die prematurely by 2050 if these policies persist.

Here are a few more examples:
• Opioid Crackdown: Cracking down on prescription painkillers made addicts switch to deadlier drugs like heroin and fentanyl, increasing overdoses.
• Iraq War: Fearing imaginary weapons led to a war that caused chaos, violence, and strengthened terrorism.
• Afghanistan War: Aimed at preventing terrorism, the lengthy war destabilized Afghanistan and ended with the Taliban back in power.
• Wildfire Suppression: Preventing smal fires for decades built up fuel, leading to massive wildfires.
• Floodwalls in New Orleans: Floodwalls gave false security, amplifying destruction during Hurricane Katrina.
• 1976 Swine Flu Vaccine: Rushed vaccinations against a pandemic that never came caused severe ilnesses and deaths instead.
• Antibiotic Overuse: Overprescribing antibiotics created resistant superbugs, causing untreatable infections.
• Excessive Cleanliness: Over-sanitizing childhood environments increased alergies and asthma due to underdeveloped immune systems.
• Overprotective Parenting: Constant supervision prevented children from developing resilience, leading to increased anxiety.
• Footbal Helmets: Hard helmets designed for protection allowed players to tackle dangerously, causing more severe brain injuries.
• Avoiding Flying after 9/11: Fearful travelers drove instead of flying, unintentionaly causing more deaths from road accidents.
• 2008 Financial Bailouts: Banks took bigger risks believing the government would save them, laying groundwork for future financial crises.

Each case above is based upon clear evidence or a lot of careful study, they are not merely theoretical.

Safety measures can backfire in five main ways.
First, risk compensation means people become careless, believing safety features protect them.
Second, moral hazard arises when protections make individuals or organizations behave recklessly because they aren't facing the full consequences.
Third, unintended consequences happen in complex systems—like ecosystems or societies—when solving one problem creates another.
Fourth, overprotection can weaken resilience, making people or systems vulnerable when eventualy exposed to risk.
Lastly, decisions based on fear often lead to overreaction, trading one danger for an even worse one due to panic-driven decision-making. Understanding these patterns can help us implement safety measures more thoughtfuly and effectively.

Safety is undeniably valuable. But maximal safety, pursued without thoughtfuly weighing ripple effects and trade-offs, frequently backfires. History repeatedly demonstrates that fear-based policies often underestimate human behavior and overestimate their own wisdom, creating greater harm than the risks they sought to avoid.

I'm really struggling with this. I agree with the basic premise that sometimes interventions intended to make us safer have the opposite effect. But it seems to me a lot of these examples are showing something different.

In Jesus' parable the servant who hid his talent was seeking safety and was criticized for it. The other two took successful risks and were rewarded. These examples could fit in several categories, but a lot of them seem like people who took a risk to fix a problem with information they had at the time and failed because of things they didn't know. If their risk had succeeded they would be seen as heroes and role models.

One example: Doctors didn't use to wash their hands before surgeries. This doctor https://www.npr.org/sections/health-sho ... en-s-lives advocated handwashing and was laughed at. Today we know he was right and many lives would have been saved if people had listened to him immediately. Contrast that with the "Excessive cleanliness" example in the list above. I would guess that people who started promoting those "excessive" practices thought they were doing the right thing according to the information they had. It seems they are turning out to be wrong, but if they had been right and children's health had dramatically improved they would be congratulated. They took a risk by promoting a new thing and failed. Wouldn't a better example of "safetyism" be a case where decision-makers refuse to adopt a promising new practice on the grounds that there just might be some side-effects? And isn't this extreme just as dangerous as the wholesale uncritical adoption of new safety practices?

I don't know that I've done a very good job of articulating my objections, but I guess I would sum it up by saying a lot of these examples seem to be cherry-picked failures ignoring lots of successes.

[Neto]

I remember playing with a friend who was later thrown from a car accident and died. I remember sitting in church observing how many of the old men, born in the 20's and 30's, were missing parts of fingers and hands. My grandfather's brother died at two by ingesting heart medication in a bottle with no safety cap. The good old days before safetyism had their share of pain and loss.

good examples.
i remember life before the polio vaccine. there were NO vaccines.

there was a lot of pain. life was uncertain and dangerous. for all.

preventing all that has obvious advantages.
people who have lived with comparably less fear and pain - are a different type of people.
i have wondered.

IF immunization counts as a vaccine, then there actually were. Catherine "the Great" advocated the acceptance of immunization in the Russian Empire (for smallpox), and, to further encourage its use, took it herself.

[Neto]

Air pollution is only one kind of pollution. The different types should be carefully weighed to determine the best approach in meeting energy demands. Reduce the demands as a starting point?
Pollution in landfills related to "expired 'best by' dates" for everything from infant car seats to wind mill vanes.
Plastic packaging materials vs re-usable glass, or, much better yet, fresh produce from farmers' markets. (The US is vastly behind in this in comparison to nations like Brazil.)
Big cities vs small towns and rural communities.
One thing that would greatly affect the level of safety of automobile travel would be the return to shipping via train, instead of the use of larger and larger trucks on our major highways, at the same time as passenger cars have gotten smaller and smaller.
The nearly wholesale loss of rural public transportation is really astounding.

[JohnH]

Some voluntary risks that threaten our health and safety or that of our children:

Drinking raw milk

Objection: facts entered without evidence.

Can you point to any children who have died from raw milk or raw milk products such as cheese and butter in recent (1990s - present) history? Keep in mind the UK has lots of raw milk products for sale in normal grocery stores such as clotted cream and cheeses, so it should be easy to find.