The ability to quickly and accurately perceive unexpected threatening or harmful situations is critical to our survival.
But our brains are incredibly complex and, sometimes, prone to errors. So Reddit user Smeghead9916 made a post on the platform, asking everyone, "What is something that people perceive as safe, but in actuality is pretty dangerous?"
The question immediately went viral and folks started sending in their answers. From giving birth to gossiping, we collected the most popular ones to help you readjust.
This post may include affiliate links.
Ladders. 7 times more likely to kill you than a gun. Which is why I keep 7 guns in the house in case some MANIAC tries to sneak a ladder in here!
well then i’ll just defend myself with the ladder i keep under my pillow
Childbirth. Still the number one k****r of young women globally.
We managed to get in touch with Smeghead9916 and they agreed to have a little chat with us. "The post was inspired by an opposite post I saw about safe things considered dangerous," the Redditor told Bored Panda about its origins.
"I didn't get the chance to read every response, but I noticed many people mentioning driving," they added.
Driving while tired. When we get exhausted, our minds stop working as efficiently as they should. Our reaction time slows down, we tend to daydream, we hyperfixate, we make poor judgement calls. That scene in Better Call Saul where Kim runs off the road is probably the most accurate depiction of driving while tired ever to be shown on TV. That scene is supposed to take place over the span of at least an hour; watch the background for clues. Note how the city just quickly vanishes. One second everything is fine, the next second you're in a ditch. Don't try to be a hero and "power through it". On a long drive, stop every two hours and walk around, even if it's just for a few minutes. Don't be afraid to stop longer. And try not to push yourself more than 6-8 hours a day.
Heavy drinking. A lot of people, including myself thought that it took a long long time for heavy drinking to catch up to you, like when you're in your '50s or older. And mostly for people whose drinking was clearly catastrophic. And even then that a lot of the damage can be reversed through quitting, in the same way quitting smoking can. I was shocked when people I was acquainted with, or friends of friends, started dying of alcoholism in their 30s-40s. All of these people were high functioning- had successful careers, family, friends. And it was liver failure that came on without much warning. I was kind of shocked- I assumed there were many decades of warnings before your system finally failed, and I thought that most people who drank themselves to the point of it killing them were people whose behavior was clearly out of control, not people who are pretty well functioning in every other way.
as a russian who was given a lot of Vodka and has witnessed family members really drunk off Vodka, and has had an uncle die from too much, i cannot stress this enough
And people are definitely onto something here. For example, one study found that about three-quarters of American drivers think their overall skills are better (57%) or much better (17%) than average.
At the same time, 58% say they had been in at least one prior vehicle crash as a driver.
"Most people think they are above-average drivers, and if drivers are a problem, it is other drivers, not themselves," the researchers noted. "This may explain, in part, the considerable public apathy about highway safety."
Following another vehicle too closely, especially in a group on the highway. Unbelievable to me that people will be 1-2 car lengths or less in a pack of cars going 60-70 mph+, especially with 18-wheelers in the mix.
Tanning. You're literally cooking your skin and increasing your risk of skin cancer.
We also asked the author of the now-viral post why they think we sometimes underestimate or overlook potential dangers in everyday activities or objects.
"That's either because of previously held beliefs that people don't realize have changed or stubbornly refuse to change (for example, how smoking was once considered safe, now we know better but people still smoke) or because statistics relating to accidents or illness are small compared to other things, so it simply isn't on most people's radar," the Redditor explained.
Not wearing a helmet while cycling or skateboarding or roller skating. I have called an ambulance for a teenager who hit his head on a curb doing a skateboard trick and had such a terrible head injury that he slipped into a coma at the hospital and died. It haunts me.
Humans are resilient and can survive crazy things but it can also take as little as an unfortunate fall to kill you.
Indeed, beliefs are our brain's way of making sense of and navigating the world. They are mental representations of what we expect from things in our environment and how they should be related to each other. Beliefs are templates for efficient learning and are often essential for survival.
As a prediction machine, our brains must take shortcuts for pattern recognition as it processes the vast amounts of information received from the environment. Beliefs allow it to quickly categorize and evaluate that information and to jump to conclusions.
But in doing so, our brains have a preference for familiar conclusions over unfamiliar ones. Thus, they are prone to error, sometimes seeing patterns where there are none, like assuming something to be safe when in actuality it can be quite dangerous.
Energy drink. I did a presentation on caffeine in school and was shocked to discover that small children can overdose on only a few cans of energy drink... particularly scary when my 10 year old sister (at the time) drunk so much of the stuff.
Putting your feet on the dash of your car while traveling.
Blocking fire escapes.
Used to see this all the time, "Oh I was just putting it there for now", "there's another door right there!", "people can just walk around/over it", "how am I supposed to do my job with all these mad rules.?!"
In an emergency, most people turn into idiots.
Give them the scenario of an obstical course, or die:
Some people just die.
We had to evacuate my office building of 1000+ people because of a bomb threat (was not an exercise). The evacuation doors at one spot were not opened and we remained stuck at the gate with no possibilities to go outside or move backwards. I can tell you within seconds people started panicking and pushing us to the gates while we couldn't go away, and the room started filling. No one was injured but we a realised that had it been a fire a real stampede would have started.
Stairs. Stumbling and falling down is one of the most common fatal accidents at home.
as someone who fell down a really steep set of stairs about an hour ago, i can confirm
Any mechanism involving a cable or rope can redirect drastic amounts of force, and gain or lose tension unpredictably.
Never take a wrap on a line that you aren't certain the potential load on if you like your fingers. Could be a tow rope on a car. A ratchet strap securing a heavy load that shifts.
And stay clear of any line under tension. You got a high speed machete if it snaps.
Also rope burn is no joke, don’t hold onto a rope or tie that has the capacity to move very quickly
Living. Everyone who have tried end up dead at some point.
Being comfortable working around machinery.
I have heard too many horror stories of people getting too comfortable and acting in ways they shouldn’t around moving equipment and machines and horribly maiming themselves or dying.
Now you shouldn’t be terrified but you should always be afraid enough to always remain cautious
i’ve read too many stories of lost arms to be comfortable around machines 💀
Not knowing what medications you take.
Can’t tell you how many times someone gets brought in to the ER without a thought in their mind about what they take for meds. “Oh my spouse/kids/etc take care of that for me.” What meds you are given in the ER/hospital can be dependent on what you are already on.
It is your health, you should have some knowledge about it.
Gossip. I've seen too many lives ruined by it.
How sad so many lives broken because some ordinary douchebags (who don't even see what's wrong with their behavior) can't keep their mouth shut.
Eating raw flour. Everyone's worried about the eggs but flour's up there with raw chicken.
Our country is virtually salmonella free. Salmonella in flour is unheard of and we can also eat raw eggs. There has been minor outbreaks but very rare.
That's the reason why Ben and Jerry's cookie dough ice-cream is made with precooked flour
everyone should always precook flour if you're planning on eating raw cookie dough. Just make regular cookie dough, omit eggs, and cook the flour
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Cookie dough. Or licking cake batter beaters. I did both as a kid.
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The reason flour is risky to eat is that while its powdery consistency looks like it's been cooked, it's actually as much of a raw food as lettuce or carrots. Flour is made from grains that are grown in fields where they may be exposed to a variety of harmful bacteria like Salmonella and E. coli. The processing the plants go through to convert from grain to flour doesn't kill them. And unlike lettuce or carrots, you can't wash flour to clean it.4 Two studies shared by the site Food Safety News highlight the fact that the consumption of raw flour is a real threat to public health. In fact, the CDC lists "raw flour" as one of their seven main groups of foods that can cause food poisoning, and there have been many E.coli outbreaks in the past decade that have been linked to raw flour.
Also in the right concentration in the air, a spark can make it go splodey.
Contamination with salmonella mostly, although other bacteria such as bacillus cereus and e coli can also cause issues. Remember that flour is milled from whole grains that have sat in a silo which absolutely 100% had rodents in it using it as a toilet.
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OK why would someone eat raw flour? Unless you are licking beaters or nibbling raw pastry?
licking a spoon with raw cookie dough on it contains raw flower and a whole lotta people do that
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Guess I'm out the loop here. People are seriously eating RAW flour? Eww wtf?!
As part of raw cookie dough or similar. I doubt anyone is eating it by the spoon. The point is everyone says the problem in raw dough is the raw egg but few realize flour can be as likely or more to have bacteria
Load More Replies... Why on earth would anyone eat raw flour? And apart from its indigestibility what do you think is in it that will harm you?
Never licked the spoon? The bacteria in it can give you very serious food poisoning. Wheat is stored in silos that are infested with rodent vermin.
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Surgery in general. I feel like people look at a lot of surgeries as something foolproof, because doctors need to have a lot of practice and skills to be able to perform what they do, but with high skill requirement jobs comes high consequences for failure, and it sometimes seems like people don't give surgery enough respect, as it is literally opening up your body in a controlled environment, something that can usually end up being fatal when not done by experts. Like yeah, the surgeons are well trained and this is their job, but at the same time i'm still holding my breath when a professional daredevil does something risky, and to not have any level of respect for the risks associated with surgery is in my opinion very naive.
For an example of what i mean, there's a noticeably large number of mothers who hold the bad opinion that if you had a c-section, you're not a mother because "You took the easy way out", which always angers me so much because of a variety of reasons, one of them being that having to need surgery for any reason is not the easy way, and it shows their lack of respect for what surgeons do.
Even just going into hospital. My mother caught three different hospital acquired diseases in a single visit. My daughter went into hospital for a minor operation on her tear duct, came out with pneumonia and died a fortnight later.
Home fireworks displays. Every time I’ve been involved in one it’s very nearly gone horrid in a very bad way due to something falling over or not launching or the fuse being way shorter than expected/advertised (usually not to do with me!).
As someone living in a place with a STRONG penchant for gunpowder, this. Every year people lose fingers or get severely burnt but they keep firing them and initiating small children on it as some dumbass rite of passage.
Hiking. If it‘s a big area without proper trail marking people tend to overestimate themselves and get lost easily. Without a cell phone with connection and enough water it can get tough really soon. Cold nights outside, nothing to eat/drink, dense forests that prevent being spotted by helicopters or wide unvegetated areas where the sun burns down on the hikers and dehydrates them even more
Don't forget bad weather. In thunderstorms, the right course of action when you can't get indoors can save your life.
Alcohol. You're literally drinking poison
Aww damn. I’m sipping on a champagne right now. Very nice tasting poison though!
Sitting, at home or during long work hours, sedentarism is already bad but sitting turbochargers all bad effects it has on your health, they are not kidding when they say its as bad as smoking, higher risks for heart disease, diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol you name it.
I have had a deskjob most of my adult life and hobbies centered around a computer but I still jog everyday and try to move as much as possible during iddle hours at work, my coworkers have even asked me why I walk around so much.
Motorcycles: I've known more than one guy who wanted to be a biker and gets himself a Harley and then finds out how hard they are to drive and get killed.
Also guys even though they have been riding all their lives dont realize they are getting older and dont have the same sense of balance or riding skills. And they get killed.
The second paragraph is exactly what ended my dad’s life a year ago. Too old to maintain his balance taking a bend in the road, and too stubborn to wear a good helmet.
Vape
Just found out my step-niece was caught vaping with her friends in the toilets of the youth club where I work. She's 10. Unfortunately my stepsister (who I have next to no contact with) can't deal with being a decent adult, let alone being a decent parent, so there will be no real immediate consequences.
Eating rice that hasn’t been refrigerated/reheated properly. If you store rice at the wrong temperature, it can allow the bacteria Bacillus cereus to grow in the rice. People who have gotten sick from the rice have had severe vomiting, sometimes as little as 20 minutes after eating the rice. I only learned about this after hearing about a restaurant where about two dozen people got sick from eating contaminated rice, and the restaurant ended up shutting down because of it.
I know that smell. Old rice smell is what I call it. If I smell it in a chinese restaurant I'm not eating the food there.
Being overweight
No. Being morbidly obese or obese is bad. Being slightly overweight is not bad for you. Studies in Japan have started to show that the sightly overweight live longer than skinny people. This is why labels and BMI are stupid. https://www.google.com/amp/s/medicalxpress.com/news/2009-06-japanese-overweight-people-longest.amp
Night shifts. It’s so damaging to the human brain to go against our natural sleep-wake cycle aligned with the day-night cycle, yet we don’t have the appropriate countermeasures to help shift workers stay healthy and safe.
Modern day coke.."but I KNOW the guy he'd never sell me bad stuff" said a lot of people who aren't with us anymore.
Sugar.
Look at how much sugar is in that grande caramel frappuccino or soda you're drinking. Now go into your kitchen and pour out that much sugar on a scale. Would you down that much sugar in one setting?
People thinking they need to put their hands on every animal they see
Hot weather. In the UK because we normally associate this country with being very cold, windy and rainy, the dangers of extreme heat is often overlooked. It's quite easy to die from heatstroke in 30 celcius weather, if you stay in the sun too long!
6 years ago I ☠️ of a heat stroke. My body temperature was 106.5. It took 17 bags of ice to bring my temperature down. I’m very lucky to be alive today.
Showering.
Everything in your bathroom is made out of material that can kill you. A slip and fall out of a shower/tub onto the hard porcelain of the toilet (or tub edge), or the corner of the bathroom counter? The tile floors? Immediate brain bleed.
Walking down stairs comes in a close second, especially if you have pets or small children.
Walking in a field of cows
i thought i read a statistic somewhere that cows were more likely to kill you than sharks
Doing “stunts”or “pranks” involving fire. I’m not saying people think fire is 100% safe, but the level to which they underestimate it is astounding.
"Hold me beer" or "watch this" are two of the most foreboding phrases in the English language. I'm sure every language has something similar.
Note: this post originally had 69 images. It’s been shortened to the top 40 images based on user votes.
HOW did GUNS not make this list once? Just Having a gun in the house increases the chances of self unaliving by 1000%. I'm pulling those numbers out my a*s but the point is roughly 25,000 people commit suicide by gun every year. That one's real. If you track gun ownership vs. gun deaths, the result is LINIER. More guns = more dead people because guns are made to kill people. Alright I think I'm done now, sorry for the rant.
“ ‘Guns don’t kill people . People kill people’ That’s very true, but if you’re holding a gun in your hand, it helps” Comedian Eddie Izzard. Making a point about gun ownership in the US.
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Caffeine is also a good candidate. Everyone consumes it every once in a while, some of us several times per day, but it's not good for your health and actually makes sleeping issues continuously worse. If you have sleep issues and drink coffee to wake up faster, congratulations, you've not done yourself a favor but just made sure that you'll be tired again tomorrow again for all eternity. Caffeine takes more than one day to vanish from your blood, and it deteriorates your sleep
Ah yes, worry worry worry and dont do ANYTHING because it's all DANGEROUS. See how fun life becomes for you.
HOW did GUNS not make this list once? Just Having a gun in the house increases the chances of self unaliving by 1000%. I'm pulling those numbers out my a*s but the point is roughly 25,000 people commit suicide by gun every year. That one's real. If you track gun ownership vs. gun deaths, the result is LINIER. More guns = more dead people because guns are made to kill people. Alright I think I'm done now, sorry for the rant.
“ ‘Guns don’t kill people . People kill people’ That’s very true, but if you’re holding a gun in your hand, it helps” Comedian Eddie Izzard. Making a point about gun ownership in the US.
Load More Replies... Caffeine is also a good candidate. Everyone consumes it every once in a while, some of us several times per day, but it's not good for your health and actually makes sleeping issues continuously worse. If you have sleep issues and drink coffee to wake up faster, congratulations, you've not done yourself a favor but just made sure that you'll be tired again tomorrow again for all eternity. Caffeine takes more than one day to vanish from your blood, and it deteriorates your sleep
Ah yes, worry worry worry and dont do ANYTHING because it's all DANGEROUS. See how fun life becomes for you.
