Canonical OTU designs seldom carry evacuation craft.
Most causes of ship damage IN THE CANON OTU result in odd situations, and usually, a lifeboat is less useful than multi-role subcraft.
I'll delineate my views in some detail...
Things that go wrong with ships:
1) Reactor leak: evacuation is likely to keep crew alive. Causes: Hostile fire or poor maintenance. in eithr case, likely to occur while the shhip has a vector. usually, occurrs whee one can be aided by others, but often those others are hostile, and will shoot the subcraft anyway!
2) Maneuver Failure: if you aren't on course, you won't get on course, unless you can field repair. If nobody can rescue you, you eventually hit a body or run out of LS. Sub craft can salvage the whole thing. Lifepods probably are less of an option.
3) Jump Drive: Misjumps can leave you weeks or months of accelleration in the outsystem, and/or put you light-years away from ANYTHING of note... Other jump failures usually leave you where you are. Retturn to planet, get blown up by hostiles, or sit and sulk. Either you're close enough for others to rescue you, or you're alone in the deep inky black. Lifeboatss no help. (They provide a little more LS duration...
4) Reactor Failure: combine LS failure, Jump failure, and Maneuver failure. Likely caused by hostiles. Likely as not, you're escape craft of any kind are STILL targets.
5) Hull breach: Rescue balls and vacc suits are good enough for anything close enough t set down for repairs, and anybody in those is afe long enough for locals to rescue anyway. Otherwise, you're far enough ouut that you're dead anyway... if you have life pods or subcraft, odds are good you mihgt be able to make it back. However, Hull breaches are usually caused by COMBAT. Which see above....
6) sensor failure: not worthy of evacuation. If you're all alone, the best thing is to salvage the one off the subcraft, not evacuate.
7) mutiny: if you evcuate, you've as much as signed it over to tthe mutineers, and evacuation is likely to result in mutineers shooting you apart so as to leave only their side of the story.
also, the classic "escape Pod" will invariably launch in a direction other than "optimal reentry". Reentry is HAZARDOUS. In a low powered vessel, it is potentially terminal. See also NASA, SS Atlantis. Real maneuver drives make it a multi-purpose craft, not a life-pod.
Real world naval craft have lifeboatss because the environment, while hostile, is benign enough to survive for days, and the lifeboats can get you far enough to survive major traumas. combat evaacuations work because both the cover of the waves and the innaccuracy of naval fire has prevented taking out the life boats DURING combat... and modern naval battles haven't had much success getting them launched anyway. That it's a iolation of the Geneva Convention to fire on lifeboats which are no longer firing is also helpful.
Space craft lifeboats are much harder to justify. They drain cargo space (at rather startling rates, BTW), and also add maintenance time. Additionally, they are either useful for other duties, or are unlikelyy to actually put you down safely anywhere. Likewise, combat useage, they do not have the cover of waves... and so become taargets right off. any of the worlds where one would be able to get aa lifepod down are, well, unlikely to let it survive thhe landing... and even if it does, there is no benefit to a lifepod that a subcraft can't help.
Likewise, the OTU lacks a LOT of safety regs compared to modern USA... modern rules require lifeboats for all PASSENGERS on LARGE CRAFT. Small craft require life preservers. Help is, barring weather, avaailable within 240 hours ANYWHERE on the planet.
In the OTU, doctors are carried, but obviously, due to the pevalence of the low lottery, they aren't held liable for the deaths of low passengers... otherwise, low passage wouldn't exist. Vacc suits and rescue balls can allow everyone to survive decompression. thaat is the single WORST case scenario, besides maneuver failure during jump on a "Decell to destination" jump exit...
If, for example, you wind up out in the oort cloud... you are going to be targeted by a microjump IF YOU HAVE LS... otherwise, you're picked up as corpses.
Fuel failures likewise either leave you where you're at, or you get to the other end without sufficient for maneuver. Under TNE, fuel failures equate to both jump and maneuver failures. Under CT/MT, add PP failures, too...
anything big enough to carry jump capable subcraft is big enough that it seldom travels alone.
ALso, the longer it takes you to get somewhere, the longer it takes rescuers to get to you for spacecraft... so if you're a day out, it's a at least 4 hours for a ship much faster than you. If, however, you're 4 days out at 4G, you are hosed.
Note also, under TNE< due to fuel restrictions, many ships take days to reach the 100diam limit.