This paper takes the (perhaps unusual) view that consumerism has helped to drive improvements in safety over the years. However, the successes in terms of the availability of (safe) goods and services, e.g. cars and cheap air transport, present contradictions (or ironies) in terms of the subsequent impact on the environment which ultimately has a deleterious effect on safety and well-being. These contradictions suggest the need to re-frame safety engineering. The paper proposes an approach based on the notion of well-being and discusses how counterfactuals might play a role in analysing and communicating about safety concerns.