I care about many things related to encrypted real-time communication, including what security engineers recommend (since their judgements probably incorporate things I probably don’t even know about or understand), so I don’t think XMPP is the best option for me.
https://soatok.blog/2024/08/04/against-xmppomemo/ https://soatok.blog/2024/07/31/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-signal-competitor/
It doesn’t matter if anything is behind you or not: any other road users would also be obligated to give up their right of way (by stopping) if you chose to stop, if doing so would help prevent collisions.