Doing it once and not being properly prepared does make you a reckless person. To use an exaggerated example like you did, would you go skydiving without taking a class ahead of time? Would you go without a parachute? Would you go without a backup?
Stop being facetious just to prove your point, please.
Going skydiving, with a class, with a parachute, with a backup, is still dangerous.
Climbing a mountain with good equipment and a buddy is still dangerous.
Being "properly prepared" is only relevant inside a context. You can't look at just preparation when deciding if something is too dangerous. The actual risk numbers are the important thing here.
If I'm driving 100 miles, and I do something sloppy that doubles my risk of dying in a car crash, the actual danger I face is less than the danger of skydiving just once with perfect prep. If it's also a special occasion where I'm going to get a huge amount of enjoyment out of it... the risk seems okay.
Even if we're focused just on car safety, we should be far more upset when someone buys a car without top-tier safety ratings than about some one-off trip like this.
Being able to point at some specific danger, like a battery on the floor, is just bikeshedding. What matters is the risk per day/month/year, and most of that risk is invisible.
