You know what scares me most about that is not that Joe Public were unaware (after all, ignorance is presumed), but that in order for those incidents to have occured in such high numbers, the manufacturers must have been unaware of the dangers and not taken the right precautions.
The reason I dislike the ignorance factor is that if somebody blows themselves up, then that's their own fault... when that person's ignorance blows somebody else up, then you have to ask whether the risk could be reduced. If ALL lithium cells, including primaries, were protected for example, would there be any incidents where a family is put at risk because of a simple mistake - to me that makes it worth it.
No, precautions were taken...but once China started cranking out cheap, low quality batteries the protection designs did not anticipate that curveball. In addition, no matter what product you are designing, Murphy's Law will eventually strike.
I have a slightly different take, and not 100% sure what you meant with "the ignorance factor." If and when people have been made aware of a possible danger, then they can make informed choices and be responsible for themselves. Part of my previous post is that people brought their primitive awareness from previous NiCad/NiMH/Alkaline/Lead Acid/etc. to Lithium, and were not made aware that these are entirely different animals.
It's one thing to be told that you should not mix a123 primary cells of different brands and/or charge voltage states....and then to be told that if you don't follow this rule you could have a severe high pressure explosion, smoke, and fire. People were not made aware of Lithium = gasoline type of potential risk.
Once you get out into activities that can harm other people, then you need government enforced laws and consequences to stop these actions...and indeed there are now many new restrictions regarding transportation and storage of Lithium batteries. You are also seeing moves to safe Lithium chemistries as another viable strategy to resolve the downsides, but keep the high density energy storage solution.
I must admit I still don't understand why anyone would want unprotected cells. To my mind it just defies logic; I would rather have myself and my family protected against the consequences of simple mistakes, or at least a greatly reduced risk.
Initially, all that were available were unprotected Li-Ion cells, so a number of us used them because of their advantages. In general, Lithium Ion cells have not been distributed or sold retail to the general public, with the exception of Chinese/Hong Kong sources. All other uses (laptops, cell phones, etc.) have protection circuits built into the packs.
I was not aware of the significant risks, and proper care of unprotected Lithium Ion cells for quite a while,
until seeing the PC Pitstop video demonstrating the explosion and fire with a laptop battery.
As Tom said, there are a few performance benefits that the protection circuit intentionally limits. Some of us have made an educated choice with much more intense monitoring in continuing to use unprotected Lithium Cobalt cells. I don't recommend that anyone use them however.
You see threads of people harvesting unprotected Lithium Cobalt cells from laptop batteries they buy cheaply on EBay. They see it as a wonderful cost savings strategy. Some of them likely are not fully aware of the potential risks/downsides, but that's up to them now.
Edit: Fragile mainly involves dropping the cell and the protection circuit or a weld breaks. There is also very little insultation between contact strip from positive end and negative battery can underneath.
See photos here. It is irrelevant to say LED gives any benefits when it comes to an exploding lithium battery with smoke and/or fire, since an overcharged cell, reverse charge, internal short leading to most documented flashlight lithium battery explosions on this forum have been in LED lights. Other than laptops, and damaged cells (i.e. when a radio controlled plane crashes), most rechargeable Lithium Cobalt Ion battery explosions/fires come from improper charging (i.e. overcharging).
