Having 12 people (normally), all with their own versions of "reasonable doubt", creates an automatic "filter", if you will, that tends toward the center. They all need to work towards agreement, and that does eventually happen in most cases. I suspect that hung juries are those that contain two or more stubborn people with extreme opposite versions of "reasonable", which would tend to be rare. Attorneys try very, very hard to screen out such persons. Group discretion is the whole idea behind our jury system, and the specific reason for not having one judge deciding. It works fairly well, and way better than many other systems. Since perfection does not exist, we have to use something, given the litigious nature of our citizens. It seems to me that it's eased off on the last few years, especially the frivolous lawsuits. I think people just got sick of awarding money to those who apparently had no expectation of responsibility for their actions (the McDonald's hot coffee woman comes to mind...). Besides that, companies have worked overtime in CYA mode on their product labeling. I bought a curling iron which stated, and I am not making this up, "Do not use while asleep".