There may be some pilots who take off into nasty conditions saying "Heck, I can pull the 'chute if it all goes wrong" but I haven't met any.
I agree; however this claim is repeatedly doing the rounds of pilot forums and seems to stick.
Would anyone here seriously use the presence of a BRS to change their personal minima?
With a chute I would be happy to fly at night (regularly).
As regards the Cirrus chute pulls, I think people forget just how many of these planes have been sold. At one stage, Cirrus were outselling Cessna, Piper and probably everybody else. There are
thousands of them flying. A few are bound to end up in the hands of pilots who are careless; in a Cessna they would have force landed or got killed but in the Cirrus they pull the chute ..... and make the news!
The business about spinning has been done to death everywhere and there is no evidence I know of that a Cirrus will not recover from a spin. Almost any conventional plane will recover from a spin. However, one has to stall first, and the only place that is going to happen is on the base to final turn, and there one is much too low to use the chute. I think the chute was basically a marketing decision, which happened to save Cirrus some testing and perhaps aerodynamic compromises to make it recover in the prescribed N turns (like the strakes on the TB and TBM which are reputed to cost a few kt).
There is an
article describing the Cirrus certification process which is interesting reading - the FAA concluded exactly what I say above: they did a survey and found that the
vast majority of stall/spin incidents would not have been recoverable due to insufficient altitude so the traditionalist "must recover from a spin in X turns or less" attitude is misplaced.
Cirrus has been a great success - the only real GA success in the last 30-odd years. Socata did quite well in the 1980s but they dropped out in 2002, and they never had a decent piston presence in the USA. Diamond were doing well but now are stuffed on the engine front.
Cirrus marketing (like cars) has upset a load of traditionalists who would like to see GA an anorak-only scene. The reality is that there is no money in the old scene anymore. One has to go after fresh blood to make any headway. Flying schools would be well advised to explore the same methods too.
Today, an SR20 or 22 is the only logical purchase for an IFR tourer. Personally I would still prefer my TB20 but they don't make them anymore.