Aaron, I'm guessing people said the same thing when avy beacons started showing up. I'm also very sure that many people gear up (beacon, shovel, probe), feel like they have increased their safety level such that they can take greater risks and duck the rope. It is today's untrained human response to technology. The same is probably true of helmets.
The trick is to figure out how these tools can be incorporated into your system such that you continue to make calculated decisions while increasing your odds of survival when you come up wrong. For all one's experience, ascending & descending skills, awareness of the human element and attentiveness to weather & terrain we all know we will come up wrong at some point. It what happens next that is up for grabs.
Helmets enable us to keep or quickly return to consciousness when we clip a tree. Descending skills allow us to hit the tiny safe window and ski out of the building torrent. Beacons, shovel and probes allow us a small chance to recover alive our mistaken, buried friends. Air bags further allow us a small chance to billow up on top of the roil. They don't mean that once on top you won't get ripped apart but for some set of run outs, they might keep you safe after you've been very wrong.
