We don't think of bending over to pick up a penny as being a risky endeavour, but it's a penny. How much risk does it take to outweigh a penny? Surely the risk of "something unforeseen" easily does the job. Are you 99.999999% sure that picking up that penny won't kill you? You need a reason for every 9 (if you're ambivalent between using seven 9s and using nine 9s, you should use seven; the number of 9s is never arbitrary), and by the time you come up with eight reasons to pick up the penny, you'll have wasted several cents' worth of time. If you can reduce the probability of harm that far, I applaud you.

This is bullshit. It doesn't matter what the absolute risk of picking up the penny is; what matters is whether not picking up the penny is less risky than picking up the penny. And, in general, there is no particular reason to believe that there is any difference in risk between picking it up and not picking it up.