Not clear how this couldn't inadvertently fry my eyeballs. Even very low-powered IR lasers are regulated because there is no blink-reflex.
In simple terms, the laser transmitter, the laser receiver and the beam that is used introduces a feedback mechanism that the transmitter can employ to immediately detect an unsafe condition and cut the high power (infra red) laser transmission. The response is so fast that the risks to damaging eyes, etc are acceptably low.
Consider the situation where a flat piece of lime glass is in the way at an angle that reflects 1% of the light and passes the rest. With a 3W beam, that would reflect 30mW of laser light which as a direct emitter would be class 3B.