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As a new mom, I've been reading a lot of warnings and recommendations and safety guidelines. It's not surprising that mothers today become paranoid wrecks; as far as I can tell danger lurks everywhere. But after a bit, you start to be able to tell what is definitely dangerous, and what is liability *ss covering.
That said, one warning I'd had trouble fully understand was crib bumpers. To look at the crib, I could easily see my baby banging her head. But for her to roll into a corner where should couldn't breathe seemed unlikely-- I'd seen her roll in and out of situations easily. Then I read in a book that crib bumpers should be removed as soon as a baby can get on her hands and knees. Suddenly I could picture the series of events; she wriggles into a corner, up on hands and knees, slides in between rail and bumper and is smothered. It was a chilling moment. The bumper came off. (For those of you who worry I was being careless before, she only goes into her crib to play with me in the room. She sleeps in her cosleeper.).
Of course her bumping her head is the common case, and her slipping and suffocating is the edge case. She bumps her head a lot, and I know she will unquestionably bump her head on those wooden rails, and she'll scream about it. But sometimes, as bad as the common case is, the edge case is unrecoverable-- or as programmers put it, fatal. I've spent a lot of time railing against unnecessary obsessions with edge cases, but the reality is that sometimes the question is not "how often?" but "how bad?"