15 people share real life examples of 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions.'

We all know the saying 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions.'

But nothing demonstrates its meaning quite like an IRL example.

In a popular Ask Reddit thread, people shared real-life examples of 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions.'

They serve as cautionary tales.

1. From LatrodectusGeometric:

A man named Dr. Spock wrote a handbook for childrearing. It was widely circulated and well received. Many of our parents likely got their childrearing advice from this book.

In it, he recognized that babies throw up a lot and therefore recommended newborns be laid on their stomachs to sleep. Unknowingly, this would result in the accidental smothering deaths of thousands of newborns.

A huge number of SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) cases can be laid at his feet.

To this day the back-to-sleep campaign is still fighting to update parents on what we now know: newborns should sleep on their backs until they can reliably roll over for themselves.

2. From EditorNo2545:

The Unexpected Consequences of your donations. TOMS Shoes, a company that pledged to donate a pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair purchased.

Turns out that the company's donations disrupted local shoe markets in developing countries, putting local shoemakers out of business and creating a dependency on foreign donations.

Additionally, the shoes donated by TOMS were not always appropriate for the local climate or culture and were not always of the same quality as the shoes being sold. Reportedly, they have ended up in landfills.

3. From RotaryMicrotome:

My neighbor who is supposedly getting evicted soon. Basically, she saw young drug addicts (30-year-olds) as people she could change for the better.

She’d find them somewhere and bring them home. Evidently, the idea was that she could show them a warm apartment and good food and they would realize the error of their ways and change for the better.

That or a safe place to do their drugs. We had a door code so they could come in and knock on her door until she answered. It was a constant stream of strange people going in and out of her room all night long.

I figured it wasn’t my problem, people can do what they want if they aren’t hurting anyone else.

But then three of the men decided to take advantage of her because it’s not like she could physically kick them out herself, and she wouldn’t call the police.

These are people who don’t want to change, they like their lifestyle and she gave them an upgrade. We are pretty sure they are doing meth in there.

They come back at 1:30 am and either snort something or smoke something that from the hallway smells like cat pee or paint thinner. Then they scream bloody murder, throw things, and have domestics until 11 am, like clockwork.

Police can’t actively go into the room and even people on the top floor are calling them. Landlord and management is doing his best to get them out but that’s a lengthy process. They disabled the door code but they are still getting in.

Even the girl has been taken to the hospital for overdosing a few times. Threats of murder-suicide are common. Anything not nailed down in the gym and lobby are getting trashed and stolen. Lobby bathroom is trashed constantly.

Cars in the parking lot are being broken into and catalytic converters are being stolen. These men stalk around the parking lot watching people. We do have visitor rules, which are being broken.

It’s going to get worse before it gets better. Everyone expects to hear bullets fly anytime now. My goodwill is gone, we want her out.

4. From Aldous_Hoaxley:

The introduction of Kudzu for erosion control. It has become invasive and girdles and kills plant life above ground without establishing proper roots, therefore causing soil erosion.

5. From notawhingymillenial:

Once upon a time, I found a wallet on the beach. Having lost my own more than once, and not having it returned to me, I am aware that it is a stressful life event. So, my first thought was how to return it quickly.

Looking through the contents, the owner was from out of state and there was no contact information other than the driver's license. Aside from that, only a few credit cards and some cash.

Not knowing how long ago the owner had left, I thought let's just sit here for a while and maybe he will return looking for it since it is the first thing I would do.

After a couple of hours of fun and sun we needed to move on; my next best idea was to turn it into the local police station which we found easily enough just down the street.

What I thought would be a quick in and out turned into a full-on interrogation session during which I was, at one point, accused of theft/robbery. It was a bizarre experience, to say the least, which wasted an hour of our day.

6. From purrcthrowa:

Bounties for killing invasive animals. You have a bunch of animals you don't want, so you pay people for each animal they kill, usually by getting them to produce the carcass or a unique body part.

People then start breeding said animal as it's easier and more lucrative than catching them in the wild. The authorities find out, and stop the bounty program. So the breeder let all their newly-bred invasive animals into the wild.

Situation is now worse than before. There's a famous example involving cobras in India (IIRC). They also tried this with rabbits in the area I used to live as a kid.

In this case, no breeding was required as the bounty drop off point was the local police station. You'd go in with a bag of cute bunny tails. The officer on duty would count the tails, and pay you for each tail.

He'd then take the bag of tails round the back of the station and pop them in the dumpster.

At which point, a friend of the the bounty hunter would dive into the dumpster, retrieve the tails, go into the police station by the front door, and repeat the cycle with the just-retrieved set of tails.

7. From scootarded:

Haiti did not have cholera. A disastrous earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, after the earthquake humanitarian forces from the UN arrived to help, and the Nepalese contingent reintroduced Cholera to Haiti.

This epidemic has since infected approximately 850,000 people and killed over 10,000.

8. From EisConfused:

Those parents who solve all their kids issues and don't make them 'stress' about consequences of their own actions.

Their kids just turn into inept and entitled adults who still act 15 for decades and not only have a harder life for themselves but make life miserable for everyone around them too.

1)yes it's bad to go too far the other way, raising a child is a balancing act, I get that, but ignoring a child isn't usually from good intentions while spoiling them often is and that was the prompt :)

2) if this sounds like it happened to you, I promise you that you can get yourself out of the cycle. It sucks and it hurts and it's unpleasant, but you can do it if you want to.

Get ready to fail, and then keep trying anyway. Persistence will be a new skill, and you will be bad at it. And that's okay.

You didn't do this to yourself, you don't need to feel shame. Digging yourself out however is something you'll be doing yourself, and you can take pride in every step you make it the right direction.

9. From raftsa:

Lobotomy. Surgery to fix the mentally unwell. It sounds so good: no more reliance on medication, you’re good from now on. But it didn’t work. The outcomes were awful and it was frequently done without any sort of consent.

It all could have been shut down fairly quickly if people were honest about what was happening, but careers and money were at stake...so many unnecessarily suffered.

10. From Twokindsofpeople:

Since the abysmal performance of American schools has been in the news recently, 'No Child Left Behind' and it's replacement 'Every Student Succeeds Act.' America has never had really good public education, but it used to be serviceable.

NCLB came in to try and create some milestones and accountability. Instead, it made the problem worse. ECSS came in and tried to address it's problems, but changed the stuff that wasn't the problem and left the bad parts unscathed.

Taken all together 57% of highschool GRADUATES can't read at a 7th grade reading level and over a quarter are functionally illiterate.

11. From Zemykitty:

On a personal scale trying to help a really drunk person. I'm a woman and talkative and I started talking to another woman at a bar who was really really drunk.

She told me her friends deserted her so I said she could hang out with me and my friends as it was my birthday (to keep an eye on her and bc she seemed fun). Then she started falling off of chairs and spilling drinks so I encouraged her to get a cab.

She started crying how everyone hates her as I was helping her outside but agreed to go home.

I got a cab, paid for it because she was a mess, and all of the sudden she got really violent and ended up kicking me in the face trying to get out of the cab because she 'wasn't done'.

She pushed me and told me to f*ck off but ultimately sat back down in the cab crying. We had already exchanged numbers so the next day she texted me apologizing profusely and asking if we could stay friends.

I told her I appreciated her apology but no thanks. I will always try to help people where I can but that turned me off from going above and beyond. Plus, you can rarely rationalize with really drunk and upset people.

12. From Much_Difference:

Most moral panics? Stranger Danger: convincing people in the 1970-90s that hundreds of thousands of American children were being yoinked into random cars by evil strangers each year.

All while downplaying and underfunding the resources that could actually help decrease child abduction.

Child abductions not only never came anywhere near those huge numbers, but it was and still is nearly always a custodial issue or a very close family member.

Teaching people to be wary of kidnapping is great; directing all their fears toward vague spooky strangers and not helping people learn how to actually prevent kidnapping is kinda sh**.

13. From urmomaisjabbathehutt:

During one of China's extreme dry seasons (think of their dust bowl period) Mao ordered the killing of birds to prevent bird eating seeds and so increase agricultural productivity.

Instead, what happened is that birds that fed on plants pests were killed making the situation even worse and resulting in the death of millions.

A bad dry season, deforestation, misuse of pesticides, and a war against nature under his belief that conquering nature was the way to improve agricultural yield and so the wellbeing of their citizens.

Stupid uninformed decisions, even if seemingly rational to a layman, resulting in one of the biggest human and ecological cost disasters.

We still make such decisions from time to time, sometimes for profit on the belief that such will benefit all and sometimes for genuine good reasons.

14. From afwaltz:

George W Bush admin created subsidies on corn to promote the production of ethanol to be used in fuel, etc. Better for the environment and so forth. Couple of downstream effects:

Ethanol in fuel lowers the fuel efficiency, so you have to buy gas more frequently (more of an inconvenience, but that's why fuel with no ethanol is usually slightly more expensive).

Corn sold for other purposes than ethanol didn't qualify for the subsidies, so there was a strong financial incentive to sell to ethanol produces instead of for food.

This drove the price of food corn (and food that uses corn-derived ingredients) up, affecting poor people the most.

The financial incentives were so strong that farmers were buying up cheap land in areas that were very unsuitable for corn production or switching away from crops that would grow more easily if they couldn't afford more land.

In western Kansas, corn needs to be heavily irrigated in order to grow. There is an enormous aquifer that stretches from South Dakota to the Texas panhandle.

Increased irrigation combine with a years-long drought drained the aquifer to the point that the city of Hays has to truck their water in.

15. From DapperSmoke5:

Federally backed student loans. Once money was guaranteed, colleges jacked up tuition and continue to do so, with no end in sight.