Do scare tactics really work?

As most of you who read my blogs know, I'm in the insurance business.  I sent an e-mail at one time.  I gave a story about how a person was riding a horse and the horse bucked him off and caused massive injuries.  I went on to explain how our insurance could have helped the person in that situation.  I then asked the person to relate that experience to their lives and see how an insurance policy would be able to help them in their lives. 

We all are doing things in our lives everyday that could turn disastrous and a policy could help. 

She responded to the e-mail and No thank you.  I don't respond to scare tactics. 

I told her, I'm so glad you don't because no one wants to be scared into doing anything but you should respond to AWARE tactics, because you need to be aware that everyday things that you think are routine can, in a second, change your entire life and you need to be aware what's available to you.

But that got me to thinking.  Are people really that afraid of making a decision that they will come up with things like this? And this lady was in sales.  If sales people don't recognize the difference between scare tactics and aware tactics, how much more would our prospects and even our customers confuse the two? 

What are you doing in your presentation that may be viewed as a scare tactic when you were simply trying to make a prospect AWARE of something?  What are you doing to avoid that appearance?  Just curious.  Thanks.