And the protagonists have clearly thought about what they are doing -- just not very hard or for very long (so not unconnected with voting for Trump I guess!).
Some of those accidents did look extremely nasty: there's one where the end of the trunk whips up (predictably) as it separates catching one of the two people, knocking his hard hat off and him over. It looks like the end of the trunk then comes down on top of him. If it did, it could well have been fatal (but by that time he was probably unconscious). The other nasty one was a tree bouncing off a pickup roll cage, onto the cab, squashing it. And the stupid taxi driver was also horrifying.
Watching a proper tree surgeon at work is quite illuminating. We have a silver birch out back which was heavily lopped a couple of years ago (it's around 40-50ft tall presently). There is a garage directly underneath it. Although the pieces taken off were probably close to the limit for a single person lift, I don't think they dropped even one small branch on its roof. Not only that, but they left it aesthetically a nice shape, too.