A fast car is a lethal weapon not just to others, but to yourself. You could crash it and die instantly.

A fast car, let's say a McLaren F1, is pretty much a finished and durable product. You can be running at 140MPH and need to brake fast to avoid an unseen obstacle. If you are skilled enough, have reactions fast enough, you will brake and you will save your life.

While you obviously won't be running a N900 at 140 MPH, Maemo can be dangerous to yourself because of its rough edges. Imagine you are in the middle of a very important presentation, and the kernel crashes because an unfixed bug. Your presentation went to hell, because the system you relied on had rough edges, and you weren't skilled enough to fix them yourself.

So in one case, lack of driving skill can get you in trouble, but it won't be because you didn't know how to tune your car. In the other case, lack of using skill probably won't get you in trouble, but lack of tuning skill can surely do. The inverse case can happen as well: you could be driving at 40 MPH, but the mechanic didn't check the brakes and you crash; you can have the most up-to-date Fremantle version, but you opened 30 YouTube videos, forgot to close them and you run out of memory.

I know the comparisons are a bit extreme, but I hope my point gets across. No system, ever, will be 100% fail-safe, error-free, or bug-clean. But that doesn't mean it is not an objective to strive for.

Risk will always exist, specially in systems with no boundaries. Plan ahead, have contingency measures, be aware of the system limits, of your own limits... and act accordingly.