If we're talking about safety, then the injury risk is kind of important.
The paper did not do any research on traction or driver overconfidence so remarks about these are just casual commentary, but for the record, the mention of AWD traction is not particularly relevant to avoiding traffic accidents:
"While these important results
imply that AWD
shall
not be considered as a safety
feature, it should be kept in mind that AWD does have benefits in terms of improved traction compared to 2WD cars, for instance on icy uphills, snowdrifts
and, depending on
the vehicle,
in
off-road driving"
