A II : It's sort of, kind of, like a watered down version of Eve's CONCORD system. In that videogame, if you anger the CONCORD gods, they will very quickly destroy you - just be glad that Frontier have introduced a very forgiving set of ATR gods - they at least tell you how long they're going to take to arrive, giving you time to scoot away.
Never played EVE, how gets that CONCORD system triggered? Is it also some kind of security system?
In my opinion this is just cheap, they could have solved it much more convenient. Lets assume they would send a wing of two corvettes and two FDL's. The FDL's could have 8 torpedo racks with reverberating cascade and the vettes some FSD interupt missiles. That would be a whole lot more fun and way more believable.
Or they just give them some weapons that are more powerfull than the ones we can have (because military grade engineering or whatever) and send two wings or whatever.
The result would be same, you have to leave the instance, even the strongest PVP Cutter cant take focussed fire from two wings for to long.
Now multiply the ATR damage by 3, and it's what it's like for a trader getting seal clubbed by basic engineered PvP ships, but with a 60m credit loss.... still ouch.
Im sorry but that analogy is just not true. Every trader has the same tools at hand as other cmdrs, if they refuse to use them because they want 2% more profit and 0.8ly more jumprange its their own decision.
Sometimes im also doing trade runs at CG's in open and not one attacker could kill my trade ship. If its a rare commodity CG's you can use every fast ship you want and just outboost them, no problem at all. And if you want to haul bigger loads then use something like a Clipper, Cutter, Any, Python whatever you just have to outfit it correct.
And if all that is no option for you and you really really want to fly shieldless then switch to a private group, there is no risk involved at all.
But sure if you fly in open without shields ar anything yeah then youre gona die very fast. Risk/reward thats how it should be or am i wrong?
Edit: Just another short example, if im coming home from a very long exploration trip in my paper thin Anaconda with around 100MJ shield (just for landings) you can be sure im switching to solo for the last 500-600Ly.