> [...] it's the government's responsibility to ensure that the roads are reasonable safe [...]

Even if you agree with that, it's still not the governments responsibility to make all possible routes exactly equally safe. (That's actually not possible, for any non-zero level of risk.)

So even if the overall risk was low and in some sense reasonable, you might still want to pick the less risky route.

Also keep in mind that different people have different risk appetites.