The wife and I were in the Burrens last summer when we spent a week in Ireland. The Burrens is an amazing place...it seems un-Earthly. One of my favorite parts of the visit...the area is where the Cliffs of Moher are...
I went to cliffs of moher in 2001? and there was just a simple guard rail there, you could go on the other side of it pretty easily, etc. My father went back last year and said it looks like a suicide prevention team camps the place, lots of ‘don’t jump, call us if you are depressed’ signs and more impressive barriers.
pretty sad.
On a more extreme side of this, I went to Gullfoss in iceland in january long ago, and there was just this ‘barrier of 1 foot stakes with a rope through them showing where you should not walk. Followed it up north along the west of the lower falls, up toward the upper falls, and just getting there, slipped on ice. didn’t slide, but if I had, that would have been that, presumably survival odds down that chasm into the lower falls would not have been good, given the temperature and possible rock impacts....
The US national parks system used to have some built-in “gotchas” due to the original law which stated that there’d be no artificial barriers — people would slip and fall into hot springs and waterfalls and whatnot. About 40 years ago there was an article about the campaign for railings and such.
“How was your vacation?” “Great! Scenery was unbelievable. Madge fell off a mule to her death.” :’)