> whereas stochastic neighborhood outages were commonplace in North America

I believe this has to do with the design of the North American split phase vs European three-phase grid. The European grid has more centralized, larger neighborhood step-down transformers, whereas the US has many more decentralized smaller pole-mounted transformers. NA proponents say any given outage will affect fewer people, EU proponents say it's easier to maintain fewer pieces of infrastructure.

(That said I live in Japan where we have a US-style grid and have only had like 2, <5 min outages during typhoons and nothing else so maybe it's just the quality of the maintenance)

or might find SOMEONE ELSE stranded somewhere due to vehicular breakdown.

yes, obviously "put on your own oxygen mask before helping others" (so you remain an asset instead of a liability), but please remember the "helping others" part (so you remain an asset instead of a liability).