[niky]

Not preference. Safety. If the rear steps out yet you still have (relatively) the same amount of static grip front and rear, no problem.... shuffle steer a bit, wait for the tires to stop sliding and gain back traction, then pull her on to safety.

If the rear steps out because the rear tires are bald, sitting on part of the carcass that was never meant to touch the road (hence, not as grippy as the tread compound) and aquaplaning at the same time, no matter what you do with the front end of the car, the rear end is going, going, going... gone. If you're driving a front-driver, perhaps you can keep your foot pinned to try to pull through the slide, but this isn't something most road users are trained to do... and certainly not at highway speeds.

If the front end aquaplanes when you're going around a corner... you're going off front-first. And the front is where all your crash structure is. If the rear end aquaplanes when you're going around a corner... you're still going off the outside curb... but depending on how fast you were going, you're either going ass-first (which is bad) or sideways (which is infinitely worse than either other condition).

And as the video embedded in the article shows, a car with the worn tires at the rear starts fishtailing loooooong before the car with the worn tires in front even begins to understeer to a degree great enough to be dangerous.