I don't like the idea of reworking basic commands, and I don't like coming to depend on specialized functions that don't draw on my own private data (it becomes a pain to work on other people's computers when you don't have your little toolset handy).

What I do to avoid rm catastrophes is simple. I type the path first, look at it closely, then ^a back to the beginning of the line and type in the command.

If I'm really in doubt about what I'm doing, I'll type in ls instead of rm, just to be sure of what I'm going to hit.