Upvote:4
Unless you are planning to need something in your checked luggage, you should definitely not retrieve it during your layovers. It will make you far more likely to miss the connection. It will also make your experience much more stressful and tiring.
Four hours is a long time, but delays can happen, and it's much quicker to transfer the bags directly from one plane to another than to transfer them to the baggage carousel, where you have to wait for them to emerge before you recheck them and they are transferred to your next flight. You would also have to worry about possible delays at immigration, since you have to clear immigration before getting to the baggage carousel, and then clear exit controls to get back to your gate.
If you're worried about your luggage getting lost, I suspect that it would be marginally less likely to happen with a direct transfer than if you collect it and re-check it yourself, but it's very unlikely either way.