> Like Russian vehicles, there is no flight termination system that receives ground commands onboard Chinese launch vehicles. Only US and ESA launch sites have such a system. Correction, Falcon 1 did not have such a system for launching on Kwaj.
The launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center/CC is effectively about 50 mile from downtown Orlando, Baikonur is in the middle of nowhere.
An unpredictable, malfunctioning rocket could still million-to-one itself onto a school bus filled with children, halfway across a continent.
The text I quoted implies there is an onboard flight termination system, even if there is no Range Safety Officer who can send external commands.
FWIW, a part from an exploded rocket, like the engine, could still destroy a school bus filled with children. The odds are very hard to estimate, and made more complicated in that there are few failure modes where a rocket failure halfway across a continent, at supersonic speeds, would reach the ground without breaking long before.