"Chicken" settings are for quitting when on low life/es.
Trying to portal when on low life is usually not a good idea.You can die in a window of time between the time your character uses the portal and transitions to town. In addition, if you have fast moving mobs, it might be impossible to take the portal, because you are blocked, get desynced, or are otherwise unable to take the portal because something else would be interacted with rather than the portal. It's doable, and it might work most of the time, but logging out to the login screen is significantly safer.