I wonder if it is better to wear a parachute instead?
For the pilot, maybe. But for the passengers ? Bailing out 4 persons would not give everyone a chance, I suppose. And in a Mooney, PA28 etc. you can be lucky if you get half the people out of that one single door.
Safety parachutes cannot be compared to the stuff, skydivers are using. The chance to survive the collision with the planet unhurt is really small. All Pilots I know who have bailed out with a rescue parachute had at least a broken ankle.
Anway, statistics for glider pilots wearing parachutes, compared with high performance microlights with an integrated chute, show at least twice the chance of survival for the pilot chute. But statistics, especially on such rare and not comparable events are allways a problem. Maybe after 50 years in service we may rate the value of a built in BRS chute. The first 3 times a Martin-Baker was used were fatal. If it would have been stopped after that, about 1000 pilots would not have been safed later.
I believe BRS has done a great job on the Cirrus, but even they cannot trick physics. You can not develop a chute that opens very quickly at low speed/altitude and opens very gently at high speed. An even if it would, what about high speed/low altitude? There will always be a certain percentage of fatal accidents, where even the best system can not help. And with more than 3000 Cirrus around now, the chance of one crashing is of course high.