I/we understand the optimization, and I'm sure you understand the problem it brings to common procedures such as DSP routines that multiply signed coefficients from e.g. video or audio bitstreams:

for (int i = 0; i < 64; i++) result[i] = inputA[i] * inputB[i];

If inputA[i] * inputB[i] overflowed, why are my credit card details at risk? The question is: can we come up with an alternate behaviour that incorporates both advantages of the i<=N optimization, as well as leave my credit card details safe if the multiplication in the inner loop overflowed? Is there a middle road?