Tornado risk is not equal across the population so statistics like that aren't worth the bandwidth they consumed to post.
As someone pointed out, even in tornado alley, the risk is still low.
People who choose to fly can manage their risk exposure. Not so for folks in the path of a tornado. So some may choose to manage that risk, especially if they can predict exposure. It sounds like the OP has reason for concern. Fair enough.
They can actually. Back when I started chasing the towns had siren systems and those were activated by spotters. People have been putting sentries on walls and in towers for millennia.
Nowadays the nearly universal Doppler radar coverage means it's nearly impossible to NOT know a storm is headed your way, if you're watching.
The majority of deaths are in areas that were under watches and then warnings for fairly lengthy periods of time.
What happens is the Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome and also that people need sleep. Late night storms are the most deadly because something has to wake you up.
And many refuse to use either SAME encoded weather radios or modern apps that alert on much smaller physical areas than the old siren systems or non-SAME weather radios did. But the tools are there to wake you up and get you to MOVE to safety.
The other one that trained spotters know and this one is really hard for folks... is that getting in the car and hauling ass out of the way of a tornado on the ground and tracking toward you, even if it means driving in golf ball sized hail, is still the right move.
I had a car totaled doing that. Wasn't quite golf ball, but a storm snuck up behind me in the pre-Doppler and pre-mobile data days and the folks at NWS manning the radios didn't have an exact location on all of us that evening. If they did, they'd have gotten me moving sooner.
I had the choice of driving into the hail shaft, or staying put with an F2 tracking for me. Problem got exacerbated by the lack of a southbound road off of the east/west I was on, for a few miles.
Beat the hell out of that poor car. It's really freaking loud, too. Managed somehow not to crack the windshield but numerous spotters back then had buddies with contacts to get new windshields install cheap. And often.
Wild West days. We would not do ANYTHING today like we did back then.
Yet those old pickups show low loss numbers for personal injury and medical payments in the IIHS data. Driver behavior is a bigger influence on real world risk than technology. Abstract tests don't do a good job at modeling even the technical risk.
IIHS for trucks doesn't take into account that a LOT of drivers don't like being near a pickup truck and also that usually oncoming drivers are less likely to pull in front of one and turn.
Not saying it's that much better but there's definitely a bit of both going on if you watch, anytime you're driving a pickup truck sized vehicle.
I think there's more idiots who happily cut off tractor trailers than cut off pickup trucks, just watching dumb drivers over the years. People who cut off tractor trailers have a death wish.
