This winter the ice has been thick enough to carry a weight of a car. On a solid good freezing winter people can drive tractors or even fully loaded timber trucks on lake ice. In such conditions there's little to worry about.

But, of course, it takes some experience to evaluate when and where it is safe to go on ice. For example, my local lake is a part of a bigger network of lakes, and each lake is connected to the next one via straits. Some of those straits are a bit like short small rivers, meaning that the water flows from a lake to another through the strait. On such places the ice never gets as thick as it does in the wide open lake where the water is more still.

I'd guess it is bit like driving a car; of course there always is a risk of dying in an accident, but once you have the skills and the experience, you aren't actively afraid of crashing your car. You trust your skills, you evaluate the changing situations and drive accordingly. It is the same on the ice; although the risk is always there, with enough experince you just stop worrying and rely on your experience.

But climate change definitely has had a major effect at my latitudes. On recent years there have been winters when I didn't dare to go to the ice at all. Nowadays the winters tend to be shorter than they were in my childhood, and mild winters are a lot more frequent.