The only time I was given an unreasonable demand in the past month was by an official faction member (not saying names here) who requested I drop all my cargo, I ran, eventually complied, and got blown up anyway.
Take risks, fly where people are. Interaction drives the server. If you're really somehow meeting that many asshats, hire an escort that doesn't suck and pay them 10% or so to fly ahead of you and check the lanes, at least then people are interacting with each other and the spineless attitude of "don't fly through systems with people in them" doesn't kill the server.
