Safety comes from all-wheel braking, not all-wheel acceleration. As long as you have traction/stability control, AWD is not really any safer unless you're on a winter rallye track (=want to accelerate into corners).
That paper acknowledges that AWD does provide more traction than 2WD, it just says that drivers can become overconfident as a result of that extra traction.
Their data also shows that for cars, across all types of cars, AWD cars are in fewer overall (though more severe; the focus of the paper) accidents than 2wd cars.
Given my own experience, even considering this paper, I still want an AWD.
If we're talking about safety, then the injury risk is kind of important.
The paper did not do any research on traction or driver overconfidence so remarks about these are just casual commentary, but for the record, the mention of AWD traction is not particularly relevant to avoiding traffic accidents:
"While these important results
imply that AWD
shall
not be considered as a safety
feature, it should be kept in mind that AWD does have benefits in terms of improved traction compared to 2WD cars, for instance on icy uphills, snowdrifts
and, depending on
the vehicle,
in
off-road driving"
"AWD technologies should be further developed so that slippery road conditions are not disguised by the improved traction provided by AWD."
AWD provides more traction, and thus more control than 2WD. I have no desire to give that up because some people take more control to mean "I can go faster." You're welcome to come to a different conclusion.
Their data also shows that for cars, across all types of cars, AWD cars are in fewer overall (though more severe; the focus of the paper) accidents than 2wd cars.
Given my own experience, even considering this paper, I still want an AWD.