Anne T. I would not be so hard on yourself and call it cowardice, more a sensible stand to take and a desire to return home at the end of a day to ones family and I for one applaud it.
As to your numbers another figure to consider would be that it takes a qualified and in practice instrument pilot approx 9 seconds to fully establish on instruments when not expecting to have to.
BigendBob, height sadly does not have much to do with it. 200’ or 2000’ the difference will in all probability not help you to sort out the problem once lost in IMC if untrained. In fact in a number of cases the flight path has become so erratic as to have caused a mid air break-up before the ground has even come into play.
The only way to prevent it, is as redeye has said, is to avoid getting into that position in the first place!!
We are not an aeroplane who would prefer to find a nice runway to land on. We can land almost anywhere safely and as such have no reason to keep pushing on into worsening conditions. Yet every year pilots keep killing themselves and their passengers because of get-there-itis. This will not change until we start to teach Captaincy to new pilots at a serious level as opposed to the lip service it gets in most PPL courses nowadays.
Along with this the more experienced pilots need to help teach the attitude that it is all right to not make a flight as opposed to the “a better pilot would have made it” attitude that sadly still prevails in some corners. Widows and orphans are attending funerals every year and will continue to do so for no other reason than someone could not make the simple decision to cancel or turn back from a trip instead carrying on following an already chosen course of action.
Redeye the question might better be “how can we teach pilots to be more flexible in their decision making process and improve their judgment so as to prevent them from placing themselves in such a position?”