Now that you mentioned it, the worst thing you could do if your hardware wallet breaks/stops working is to start panicking. Some people do that. Omg, my HW isn't working, what do I do? I must hurry and see if my crypto is still safe. And that's when mistakes happen. If they don't have a second hardware wallet, they will enter their seed into a hot wallet just to see if everything is ok. By doing that, they just downgraded the security of their coins and you can't get that back.
Physical issues with the signing device don't affect your crypto unless you leaked your keys as well. If your primary HW is no longer working, remain calm, don't enter your seed anywhere, and wait for the replacement to arrive (assuming you ordered a second unit).
I've seen a lot of people lose money by going to hardware wallet phishing sites, saving mnemonic backups online, etc. Most of them are beginners who aren't ready for self-custody yet. We still have a long way to go.
This is a summary (in 137 words), of why most owners of bitcoin don't know anything about it and just look at the price appreciation.
It's also exactly the reason why most people keep coins on exchanges. Because even if they panic, they won't be able to do anything, because they don't own the keys.
It proves, once again that self-custody = responsibility.
And they usually lose a lot of BTC and, as you mentioned, they are people who only look at the price movement and are the first to leave the market when there is a drop of more than 5 - 10%.