“Eating Raw Flour”: 40 Dangerous Things That Most Perceive To Be Safe

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.

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."

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.

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.