Those parachutes are pretty dang cool. I'm of mixed feeling about them, but they're undeniably useful in some situations.
My concerns about them are this:
1. That some pilots might use the fact that they have the chute to decide to fly when they shouldn't. "Sure, it's instrument conditions, but if anything happens, I'll just pull the chute" isn't proper risk management, it's taking an emergency backup measure and turning it into a primary flight planning tool, an action which inherently reduces safety. This can be fixed through education, but the number of Cirrus crashes seems to suggest that this education isn't happening yet with the largest trackable segment of GA that uses the chutes.
2. The non-pilots might make the determination that ALL airplanes should have this. Seatbelt and helmet laws prove that government has no problem using central authority to legislate personal responsibility. This is bad for liberty, and there are plenty of planes that don't have the spare performance to take on the extra weight, not to mention the financial hardship this would place on people. This concern can probably be alleviated through education too, but unfortunately that education would probably have to come via lobbying groups like AOPA, and I grow less and less convinced that they represent the interests of small pilots.
3. See #1. It's worth mentioning twice.
I'm perfectly comfortable flying in a plane without them, but I can see the utility of investing in something like this if it becomes practical. While I think I could safely land in the vast majority of failure modes I'm likely to encounter, the video posted yesterday demonstrated that there's always something out there you might not expect that can get ya. Most of GA doesn't have the opportunity to join the Martin-Baker club, so this might be the closest equivalent for the non-military pilot. Dunno, it's a thinker.
