I have asked to be moved when originally assigned a ground floor room. Although safety was one issue, the specific room was on the hall between the lobby and the elevator, so it would have been noisy (the floor in that section was tile, and from the lobby you could hear how annoying all of the rollaboards bouncing over the tiles was going to be). Also, whenever possible, I like to open a window in my room, and that's not going to happen on a ground floor.

And I too have had a vehicle come through the wall of my ground-floor room. Problem was, it was my own, pushed there by the much bigger truck that lost its brakes in the middle of the night!