I think it's impossible to judge individual actions without understanding the mental schemes driving our bias towards one (OK to land on beach, highway) or other other (not OK)..
Here is an imaginary context, in order not to get bogged down on validity of numbers. This is totally made up, but good for illustrating the bias we can have.
Imagine that we live in a world, where on a yearly basis, 100 aircraft, with 200 occupants in total, crash, crash-land or emergency land outside airports and airfields, threating generaly public lives.
Outcome Year #1: :
Aircraft occupants:
Fatality: 20
Serious injury: 50
Minor or no injury: 130
General public on the ground:
Fatality:10
Serious injury: 20
Minor or no injury: no data.
Outcome Year #2:
Aircraft occupants:
Fatality:50
Serious injury: 80
Minor or no injury: 70
General public on the ground:
Fatality:0
Serious injury: 0
Minor or no injury: no data.
Many pilots will tend to prefer Year #1, because it increases the survivability of airplane crashes, and they will be biased to land on roads, beaches in emergencies..
The general public will prefer Year #2, because that poses the minimum risk to them. They will hate pilots who put innocent lives at risk for saving their own skin, even if no one is hurt on the ground.
Those who feel part of both groups (one day a pilot, the other just an ordinary person on the ground), look at the total picture and realize that Year #1 resulted in less
overall deaths and injuries than Year #2, so it's a more favorable outcome for the overall society. When being
pilots and facing emergency landings, they will also be biased to use roads and beaches for landing sites, due to the perception that it's usually ovvers a better overall outcome for the entire society, rather than heading for cliffs and forests and deep sea.
Now imagine that the situation changes during year #3
Outcome Year #3:
Aircraft occupants:
Fatality: 20
Serious injury: 50
Minor or no injury: 130
General public on the ground:
Fatality:100
Serious injury: 200
Minor or no injury: no data.
You can see that the aircraft occupants are impacted the same way as in year #1, but there was a lot more civilian casualties. How will that impact the opinions?
Many pilots, who prefer Year #1 outcome, will still bias for high aricraft occupant survivability as before.
The general public will be outraged about the increasing casualty numbers.
Those who feel part of both groups, look at the total picture and realize that Year #3 resulted in more
overall deaths and injuries than Year #1 and #2, so it's a less favorable outcome for the overall society. When being
pilots and facing emergency landings, they will now be biased to avoid roads and beaches as emergency landing sites, due to the changed perception that it's usually causes more grief for the entire society than heading for cliffs and forests and deep sea.
Even when down to 1000 ft, it is very hard to see what is the actual general public density on a road or a beach, so you can't really run an exact calculation of the risks to yourself vs. risks to people on the ground. Instead, our perception on the outcome will influence us making a decision on landing site priorities. And some of us are thinking it's OK for risking general public life to some extent, in exchange for saving aircraft occupant lives, as long as the overall balance is positive, meaning more lives saved in total, than lost, more serious injuries prevented than suffered. This is a little bt cold-hearted, yet pragmatic approach, that comes with the possibly of dire, life-long consequences of risk taking ("I survive, but I kill innocent people on the ground") .