But the most expensive gear isn’t necessarily more dangerous than the entry level gear, and in some cases, may even be safer.
Right, but the issue is that if they don’t know what they are doing then the gear is irrelevant. I’ll give an example. If I’m skiing and I see someone hiking up to the off-piste bowl run in brand new topline gear, and they are visibly struggling to do the hike, I can ssume they are inexperienced and might really hurt themselves or crash into someone else.