When she was five years old (late 80s/early 90s timeframe), my sister propped the lid up on the washing machine, and jammed a toothbrush into the safety switch so it would run thinking the lid was down. She thought it looked really cool and pretty. At one point she decided the vibrating was cool too. She got up and danced on the top of the washer. Being that soap gets slipper when wet, and kids don't always have the grace of a gymnast, she slipped and landed feet first in the washing machine. It's not every day the emergency room get to body cast a five year old kid with multiple femur fractures.
The grotesqueness aside, I do loath the pendulum swing we have toward safety these days. It's so bad now that it makes things worse in a lot of cases. I have to dick with my phone for navigation (which requires a lot more looking away and danger) because my car won't let press a couple of buttons while it is moving in the name of "safety."
You already live in this world, though. Or at least something close to it.
It's actually quite astonishing how, despite the growing chemical and mechanical complexity of household items, most household things are actually quite safe to have around children. It would be quite easy for these things to be actively dangerous, but fortunately a combination of thoughtful design, fear of lawsuits and regulation works to make them safe.
(Also if we're talking in context of white goods, you can't ignore children in the design process, as a good chunk of the target market has them, and the play around where such appliances are deployed.)
Example of thoughtful design: prescription drug containers that can't be easily opened by children, but can be opened readily by adults.
Example of mindless nanny-statism: washing machines that you are simply not permitted to open at certain times, period -- not even in case of power outages, component failures, or plumbing emergencies.
I hope you can see the difference. Don't defend shitty engineering. It makes the whole world a worse place to live.
Entirely my take, minus the irony. I hugely dislike driving with an armed boxing glove in front of me. A boxing glove originally put there for the benefit of people not inclined to wear a seatbelt. The vast majority of traffic accidents I see (and I drive 8 - 10 hours every day) are entirely self-inflicted. Too much speed, too little distance, no focus on the road ahead and the rear view mirror.
If there isn't a meteor on the hood, but instead the driver ran into something, then the number of times your assumption is wrong will be sufficiently small that the parents observation is valid.
Certainly it will be a far more useful way to guide policy than "You don't know for a fact that all those accidents weren't caused by external events outside the drivers control." however technically true.
There aren't evil driving-fairies nudging people's elbows, and we have manufacturing and inspection regulations to keep the percentage of mechanically unfit vehicles low. That just leaves the drivers themselves holding the primary responsibility in the majority of cases.
These are all things you already knew, which makes the question disingenuous and of questionable ultimate purpose.
I was in a major wreck last winter. Hit a tree head-on due to black ice on the road. I was not braking or turning at the time of the slide. My car had snow tires and was in 4-wheel drive.
How exactly is that my fault?
You make no men to on of environmental factors causing wrecks.
You also make no mention of multi-car wrecks.
Clearly you live in some part of the world with perfect weather?
Attempting to refute a point that no one else made is definitely your own fault.
The original commenter can be reasonably assumed to know which accidents they witnessed could have been influenced by things like weather, and thus are not part of his assertion.
Likewise all the follow-on vehicles in multi-vehicle events are irrelevant. No mention was made because they obviously have no bearing on the observation and point being asserted. Meaning, sure, in addition to a large number of a certain class of accidents he's talking about, there are also a other classes of accidents he's not talking about, so what?
Clearly you live in some part of the world with imperfect schools? Oh was that rude and childish?
