But let's get the facts about this parachute deployment and assess
whether it really saved four people from an otherwise certain
death...or was just a crutch for pilot error.

In WWI the British forbid the use of parachutes in military aircraft because
they thought the pilot would be more likely to use the chute than make the
effort to bring a damaged aircraft back to the field. A lot of needless deaths
occured because of the stupidity of a few people.
I suspect the same reluctance to progress is at work here. One can speculate
that of the previous fatal VFR to IMC Cirrus accidents, lives MAY have been
saved if the chute had been deployed. Skip the arguement that Cirrus chute
didn't deploy - that now seems to be corrected as evidenced by the last 3
deployments.
There's a lot of NTSB reports of fatal accidents reports in which the
availability of a working chute probably would have been very appreciated by
the now deceased occupants.

John