I love the debate, because it goes to the heart of how we get safer things. The weight of the parachute is large (about 75 lbs for an aircraft with 1200 pounds of total weight!)
Is the parachute the best place to spend the next 75 pounds of weight? I seriously doubt it, based on what causes accidents that the 'chute cannot possibly help. I would contend that a list of how to spend 75 pounds to make a machine safer could be drawn up from the list of what makes us crash.