One thing thats always interested me is no matter if you pull out a LCP, .45, whatever. The thing that sets everyone back on their heels (when they ask to see what you carry) is when I pull out the Camillus Heat and pop open the spring assist blade. Even holding the knife down by my leg when I open it, without fail that's the thing that intimidates and makes everyone uneasy. the CRKT flips open with a snap of the wrist, but there's SOMETHING about the "switch blade" of the Camillus that unsettles everyone. 
I hear you, I carry a Benchmade Presidio auto pretty regularly as well and people always seem to be taken back by and auto knife. It always starts the "I didn't think switchblades are legal" discussion. As far as what type of neighborhood I live in, not to bad but I'm on the road pretty regularly and on any given day can be a couple hundred miles from home in a bad neighborhood at an hour that's less than ideal.
The funny thing is I'm usually less armed at work since my duty/issue handgun is a XDm, more rounds but 9 instead of 45. I still carry the LCP in the back pocket and the M&P 340 gets swapped out for my S&W 337ti since I can't carry .357 for work. I do gain quite a few rounds though since 3 XDm mags = 58rds and 3 of my 45 mags gives me 25rds. I'd rather have the 25rds of 45 in most instances but the work truck also has a M4 & 1187 police model in it. I had to go to meetings for work a couple weeks ago and they were business casual but I was still limited to 9mm/.380/.38spl since I was working so I went with my LC9 as the primary with the 337ti in the front pocket and the LCP in the back pocket with 1 spare LC9 mag and one extra tuff strip of .38 no extra for the LCP. I felt like I wasn't even carrying.
I really need to get a XDm compact for those situations because even though we can carry whatever we want for work within the caliber limitation if we have a on duty shooting the company lawyers will only represent us if we're carrying some variation of our duty weapon (XDm-9) without any trigger mods. If I use anything else and LEO pursues anything (unlikely but possible, especially depending on location) then I'm on my own for my defense.