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So let's just say you were in So Cal, driving S/B on the 710 Freeway. You plan to take a cross town freeway from the 710 over toward Redondo Beach. Oh, gee, the signs are confusing, and you end up on a different freeway than you anticipated.
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Exactly.

I came very close to that exact situation once in NY. During the period of the big race riots.

Flew to LaGuardia. Since you are from the left coast, you know how the cab deal works at a big airport. You must take the first cab in the line. The first cab was driven by a Chinese guy that must have just got off the boat. All he ever said on the whole trip, over and over and over again was "You know where you want to go? I take you". A real confidence builder.

Destination: Factory in the toughest part of Brooklyn.

I had specific directions carefully written down on paper as to every single turn to make to get there. About halfway, we came to a traffic accident partially blocking the intersection. Big Irish cops directing traffic. Literally hundreds of black people in a very bad humor.

If the cops had made the cab detour, I would have been in deep doo-doo.

I made it, but when my visit was over, the plant owner was so concerned about me that he put me in his personal limo and drove it himself to get me downtown to Macy's, where I was to meet my wife.

A few days before, one of his workers was robbed and stripped to the bare skin on the sidewalk in front of the plant. The even took his underwear. He wore someone's raincoat to get home. There was no way the owner was going to let me ride a cab.

Razor wire around the parking lot. Door between the entrance lobby and the office a steel door with a sliding peephole, like the old speakeasies in Chicago in the days of prohibition.

The posters that are so sure they would never ever get in a spot like that say so only because they have never spent any time outside of their own little corner of the world.

Of course, they will immediately post umpteen posts telling us how well traveled they are, but the cat is out of the bag already and they might as well forget it.

If you have really been around, you have been close to disaster more than once.

Of course, you could have been so ignorant of your surroundings that you did not know it, which is also quite likely.

I had another experience in Chicago that was really bad, but that is too long a story.

If you have really been around, you have been close to disaster more than once.

Yep. I missed an exit off I-95 in Philly once, and (already late) to avoid going over the bridge into NJ I thought I could just get off at the next exit and reenter on the southbound ramp. Unfortunately there was no southbound ramp, and I proceeded to blow every stop sign going past burned out houses and cars until I found the nearest on ramp. Scary stuff...and not that uncommon. I suspect most people who regularly head into cities have similar stories.

Flew to LaGuardia. Since you are from the left coast, you know how the cab deal works at a big airport. You must take the first cab in the line. The first cab was driven by a Chinese guy that must have just got off the boat. All he ever said on the whole trip, over and over and over again was "You know where you want to go? I take you". A real confidence builder...<<<<<<<<<<<<

Yikes, that whole experience sounds awful, and you were lucky! We used to have lots of independent cabs lurking around in the airport areas, and who knows about those drivers. Wasn't there a movie (several versions) about a couple arriving in NYC, only to get robbed/mugged/lost etc.? I'm thinking Jack Lemmon and Steve Martin played the guy in the different versions.

I know everyone can pull out these experiences where we made rational decisions, given the facts, that went bad, as compared to dumb stuff we did that may or may not have turned out bad.

Many years ago, before I had reason to pay closer attention, some of us at a conference (3 women) in Oakland drove a rental car to a restaurant we'd heard of and kept getting deeper and deeper into an unsavory neighborhood. We didn't turn around, and spent the meal and return trip sure we would be carjacked and/or murdered (we were sure we were being followed at one point). We had no business there, didn't follow our instinct and try to go someplace else, and if something would have happened, everyone would have been shaking their heads saying "What were they thinking"?