Going with your experiences over soundly collected data is a very risky move prone to bias and discrimination (only noticing what affects people like you).
Data, when reported by a reputable organization, is going to be substantially more predictive.
Reputability is not equally subjective (though it is somewhat subjective), it is based on past performance and current utilization through a trust network.
If an institution has a history of providing a certain quality of service, and is successfully used to make highly consequential decisions, it is objectively more reputable than an institution with neither of those things.
Aggregating individual opinion (sometimes) has a washing-out effect on bias, which makes it valuable as a tool to push towards objectivity. [0]
This is why I much prefer to follow guidance from institutions over individuals. There's also a "stewardship" in institutions that seems effective in countering other forms of bias (but not all).
Of course there's a whole lot of bias left over that doesn't make this a fire-and-forget strategy, but comparatively it seems closer to objectivity than to just trust one's eyes alone, which has effectively zero systemic corrections for bias.
[0] - You may know about this already, but I think of it like crowds singing, and if you'll afford me a bit of metaphorical license, here's a better explanation of how that works than what I could write: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/382429/in-concer...
Data, when reported by a reputable organization, is going to be substantially more predictive.