I disagree with this based on my own personal experience. Maybe it would be better phrased to say that you're more likely to be involved in an accident.

Personally, my wife and I have commuted up to 37500 miles annually, each. That's about 75k miles annually on two vehicles. In more than 30 years of driving since we have been married we have owned and driven vehicles all over the US from the east to the west coast thru major cities, rural areas and off-road for recreation. Combined, I can document more than 1.5 million miles we have driven and I can say with confidence that too many of our fellow drivers on some of those roads were not in a condition to drive.

In all that time, we have only been involved in three accidents. All three of those accidents occurred in the last 5 years and involved the same vehicle. That vehicle was a 2013 VW Passat. It had all the fancy stuff on it to keep you safe in an accident. The main failure though that contributed to two of the accidents was an illumination failure. The headlights on that vehicle were narrow LED lights that even on high beams could not illuminate the highway in front of the vehicle far enough for the driver to react to objects or animals in the roadway when they are moving at highway speeds.

Modern slit lights do not have the illumination reach that older lights offer. In addition, modern lights may be keyed to your steering wheel so that when you turn the lights they follow thru the turn. Since the lenses on the lights have a sharp cutoff at the top they cannot illuminate relatively moderate slopes as you ascend hills. You are met with a sharp cutoff instead of being able to see up the hill you are driving over.

This results in you over-driving your headlights at highway speeds because you will travel farther than your lights can illuminate in the time it takes you to recognize a hazard in the road or beside the road. This is simply not safe.

Our Mazda has this problem.

The third accident involved another driver who had a red light and a distraction in their hand and they jumped into the intersection t-boning the car hard enough to knock the front wheel under it. That sent the car to the junkyard after a brief trip to the dealership to sell it into the dieselgate buyback since it was still drivable and qualified. Insurance totalled it the day before the buyback ended so we got lucky.

When we have encountered drivers who are distracted or obviously impaired I use the skills defensive driving taught me to create a gap to separate myself from the problem. If there is an opportunity then I have a passenger call 911 to report a dangerous driver.

I taught my wife and kids how to improve their driving using pin flags to mark a course on the back part of our property. They drove several vehicles with the goal being to understand where you are in space through the whole drive. I placed cans in the path and had them drive the course until they could consistently crush the can in any of our vehicles using either the driver or the passenger tire. That skill allows you to look at something like a parking spot or a gap between vehicles and know instinctively whether your vehicle will fit without issue. It also helps you understand your limitations at high speed on the highway when an object is in your lane. You have a feel for exactly where you can shift to avoid it without affecting any other drivers on the road.

I have tried to be a safe driver and to make sure my wife and kids are too. A safe driver is the most important thing that any vehicle can have in it. The driver needs to be aware of where they are, they need to be alert, and they need to be in a dependable vehicle.

Fancy gizmos, screens, airbags, touch-sensitive features, sensors to locate hazards in adjacent lanes - these are things that either distract a driver and make them less safe or they are things designed to mitigate the consequences of failing to be a safe driver and to save the lives of the people in their vehicles so that this person who couldn't be bothered to pay attention to traffic around them can get right back on the road and do it again.

Laws don't fix this. Cars that drive themselves might be a solution. In the meantime, the safest vehicle is a vehicle that is well-maintained and that has a safety-conscious driver behind the wheel.

Sorry for the book and the rant but I've put a lot of miles on vehicles of every description - off-road only vehicles, cars, pickups, SUVs, 18-wheelers and smaller OTR trucks, moving vans, etc.

You protect yourself on the highway and in the process you keep everyone else safe.

Someone else's inebriation does not make you less safe unless you are not watching your fellow drivers for potential inattention issues that could cause a collision.

With that said, I hope you understand why I disagree with the conclusion given in your previous statement.