To be sure, motorcycles are very dangerous. Just getting on a bike, you assume a certain amount of risk. Not riding a motorcycle is always safer than riding one.
But that also applies to most worthwhile activities in life.
Is a leather suit the best possible protection? No doubt about it. But it’ll never protect you as much as not riding. So if you’re going to ride, you’re already in a certain sense compromising your safety. A.J. Liebling wrote that you don’t learn to box in order to avoid getting hit, just as you don’t go swimming in order to avoid drowning. Same thing with motorcycling. For all of us here, the reward outweighs the risk.
Consider that none of us likely rides with any real neck protection. That’s a pretty big risk we all assume from the get-go. But yet we still ride.
I personally think the thing is to consider the odds of when you’ll encounter different types of crashes. Crashes at high speed are exceedingly dangerous, yet statistically rare. This is the issue behind the Hurt Report controversy.
In the summer I wear a Fieldsheer High Flow armored mesh jacket, with connecting Fieldsheer Titanium mesh armored pants, with jeans underneath. Perfect protection, nope. But for me, a good balance of safety, comfort (being uncomfortable on a bike absolutely affects your riding, which is another safety factor as Briderdt mentions) and usability (i.e. you can’t wear normal clothes under a leather suit, so you have to wear it off the bike too).