Since it usually happens to miners who are gathering ore off on the edge of the map it cascades with the darkness and unsightly environment debuffs they usually deal with so that's a bad scene. The other ones who cop it are tamers/hunters and the issue with them is less the debuffs but more if you don't notice they are out there, they wont wake up before wild animals do and get hungry.

Nah I believe it's just an issue with the search radius again. Thus just say, no beds near here when they decide to rest so the ground under them is what they pick. Sometime you see it get queued when you prioritise mining or something and you can priorities going back to their bed and the get there fine. Problem is most the time because they sleep on the spot there is usually no way to see it coming and intervene before they get both the slept on ground, slept outside (and sometimes slept in bad temp) debuffs. And if you then tell them to get up and go to their bed (which you want to do because the rest recovery rate on the ground is abysmal) you also get interrupted sleep.

I've never had that happen to me, probably because I play on the boring default map size. Maybe it's a matter of them just being too exhausted to make it back home in time?

Awesome. Is there an equivalent of this for sleeping so my colonist stop falling over face first in the dirt if their assigned bed is across the map? (To be clear not talking about them passing out, just deciding the ground is good enough)