Your default response should be a safe one
In his training DVD "Ukemi from the Ground Up", Ellis Amdur explains how your default response should be a safe one. In the context of the video it's about what your action should be in response to an Aikido technique like kote gaeshi: Do you jump and do a breakfall? Or do you roll? The breakfall is the safe option. The roll is the comfortable one, except for the times you should have done the breakfall. Then you break your wrist...
Unfortunately, the choice between breakfall and roll is not up to you. Kote gaeshi is a throw executed through a wrist lock1 and it's up to the person applying the technique what kind of throw it will be. Either they gently apply the wrist lock, guide you to the ground, and you can roll. Or they apply the technique more dynamically and there's no time to roll. In that case you have to jump and turn over your arm to fall safely on your side/back. That's what's called a breakfall.
As you can imagine, there's not always a lot of time to think and decide between roll and breakfall. And if there's no time to think, whatever your default response is, that's what your body will do. That's why your default response to kote gaeshi should be the breakfall, the response that's safe in both circumstances. The worst case scenario is that you take a breakfall you didn't need to. While the alternative, defaulting to the role even when you should have done the breakfall, comes with significantly worse consequences.
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