Meh. The vast majority of player interactions I've had in Open have been very positive. There's been a few shots fired in anger, sure... but Open is where this game truly shines.
Every single person on my friends list is from Open, not from some website Pvt group. Good folks are out there! I consider myself one of 'em.
I fly primarily in Open because I'm not afraid I suppose. If there's going to be shooting, I'll give as good as I get. But that scenario has been so rare in my ED experiences...
Can we stop with the 'afraid' please, it drives me mad every time I see it.
Things I'm afraid of:
Heights (or more accurately falling off them)
Losing my job
Trump winning the US election
Dying alone
Things I'm not afraid of:
My pixels blowing up
I was doing my runs for the trade CG in (unsurprisingly) a trade ship. Lightweight bulkheads, only three pulse lasers to take care of pesky npc interdictions, no chaff, no heatsinks, cargo space only. The fact is that if I fly that ship in open and get instanced with any of the pvp crowd I'm either dead, or I high wake out. However since I have to get to a specific station in a specific system, high waking out solves nothing at all because I have to go back and the same thing will happen.
It doesn't matter how good or bad a pilot I am, I will not survive an attack by one or more players flying dedicated pvp combat builds in a trade ship. I'm not 'scared' of it happening, I simply accept that it would happen. That's without even considering the 'hilarious' trolls looking to get the station to open up on players as they try to rush in. I simply don't want to blow 20m+ credits on a couple of rebuys. I'm not flying a ship that is remotely equipped to deal with combat.
So why would I do it? What possible incentive do I have?