The year 2001 is the first year since 1931 when a 2-digit year could be confused with a day of the month. It's the first time since 1912 that a 2-digit year could be confused with a month.
So, what is "01/02/03"? Is it January 2nd, 2003, February 3rd, 2001, or something else? (Six possible interpretations.)
I recently encountered some code that tried and failed to convert "YY/MM/DD" data based on a "MM/DD/YY" format, from 1995 to 2000. Ironically, it always produced the correct result, because its error processing always silently reverted to the previously formatted data, which was correct. Now that "01/01/17" (January 17th, 2001) can be interpreted with the "MM/DD/YY" format (as January 1st, 2017), the program produces incorrect results... starting January 2nd, 2001.
See also InternationalDateFormat.