I think I will respond to this by sharing some of my own firsthand experience. Before I do though, I will state that I have never had a knife fold on myself (well, maybe as a 4 year old when I got into my mom's purse and started playing with her pocket knife but that's beside the point).
For much of my life, I have worked in the trades, manual work of some sort or another (not anymore as I am a software engineer now). Having a knife at my side or in my pocket was second nature then, much the same as it is now - I just had far more opportunities to use my knives then, where today, my knives are far less busy unless I am out of doors, hunting or such.
There are countless instances of where I used my knife in rather tight areas (i.e. crawlspaces, attics, man holes, etc.). In many cases, I was sticking my hands in areas that required work done where I couldn't put eyes on at the same time - work had to be done by touch. You might think it foolish that I would risk using a knife in such circumstances but I had to "git 'er done" and I was able to conduct my work largely without any mishaps because, well... I am a skilled worker.
To be fair, I always used a locking knife or fixed blade - slipjoints were not really on my radar at the time. So to Forrest's point above, even now, I would still not use a slipjoint in the work that I performed in the past. But if it was the only knife available to me at the time, then my work would have been conducted far more cautiously and the risk of bloodletting would have been far greater. The 97 magnifies that risk considerably with its very weak action and though I feel I would still be able to "git 'er done", it comes with far more risk than other knives - even other slipjoints.
In the end, the 97 is not the working knife that it appears to be - in my very not-so-humble opinion
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