Cirrus are dangerous.
We can now see that the Cirrus fatal accident rate is higher than the overall general aviation (GA) rate of 1.19 fatal accidents per 100,000 flight hours.
Comparing Cirrus to the GA fleet is a tough comparison because GA includes multi-engine turboprops and turbojets flown by two pilots. This redundancy and professionalism produces significantly fewer fatal accidents. Backing out the flight hours and fatalities for those aircraft from the survey reduces flight time to about 14 million flight hours and produces about 261 fatal accidents.
Thus, the single-engine piston accident rate is about 1.86 fatal accidents per 100,000 flight hours.
The Cirrus rates of 1.42 to 1.76, depending on the time scale, compares very favorably with single-engine piston aircraft rate of 1.86.
But what about other competitive aircraft like Cessna, Beechcraft, Mooney, Columbia, or Diamond? Unfortunately, none of those manufacturers publish their fleet hours. The legacy manufacturers have produced considerably more aircraft over a long period of time, so fleet comparisons may not be meaningful. For instance, the FAA survey of GA activity reports planes less than five years old fly about 200 hours a year, while planes 25 years or older only fly 125 hours per year.
As for fleet sizes, other new manufacturers have such small fleets in comparison to Cirrus Design, perhaps one-tenth to one-third the number of airplanes, that just a few accidents can cause a huge fluctuation in their accident rates. Until more information becomes available, no meaningful comparisons are possible.
I think that is pretty balanced. Make your own mind up, but please base your views on the facts, rather than the usual ill infomed views expressed by some, who see the facts as a nuisance.
The parachute leads pilots into places they should not be.
Do you recall the many many accidents I am sure we have all read about involving pilots "finding" themselves in conditions beyond them or their aircraft (or both). Do your recall those cases of CFIT. Do you recall pilots losing instruments in IMC. Do you recall icing. I do.
Pilots can, and will always get themselves in fixes. There most of us go for the Grace of God. That doesnt mean we shouldnt do everything we can to avoid getting ourselves into a fix in the first place. However given that it will continue to happen, it is no bad thing to have an out. I think the chute is an out.
I think fitting seat belts to cars is a good idea because someone's son or daughter will think he is Stirling Moss.
With no apologies I think arguments to the contrary are dangerous and foolish because only a fool believes he will never make a mistake. I had the pleasure to be in the sim a few weeks ago with a pilot with nearly 40 years behind him, 10s of thousand hours, etc. During the simulated engine failure he "missed" a very obvious indication of the problem and "failed" to take the appropriate vital action. The training captain smiled and said nearly everyone does that! As I said you are a fool if you think you will never get yourself into a situation when the chute might come in handy unless, of course, you possess the very advanced flying skills of our friend Mr Guppy.
