Yes, I should have said this explicitly. The risk isn't caused by it being poorly-engineered, but that as an aerobatic fighter jet it will tend to attract risk seekers. So I guess it'd be analogous to, say, crash rates involving sports cars.
Not just risk but showing off. In a similar manner most crashes involving home builts / experimentals is low and slow showing off. Its the cessna 172 pilots that croak because of get-home-itis and bad weather and bad navigation and related CFIT.
Its hard to get killed at 8000 ft other than maybe catastrophic disassembly (well, here, where the highest mountain is only 1600 ft...). But seemingly anything happens at 100 feet and you're pretty much dead, unless you're lucky.
Low altitude flight is very much like drunk driving which is safe at least 99.99% of the time if not more, but if anything ever happens oh boy are you in trouble...
After skimming a few of the reports, at least 2 of the accidents were due to racing or aerobatics. I imagine that carries somewhat of a risk regardless of aircraft.
I've always dreamed of owning an L-39 since that can be had for around $200K http://www.internationaljets.com/jetaircraft.html