Anti-skid braking makes people take more risks as the risk-characteristics of the individual does not change and he will take more risks now. Same with flying. The aircraft has synthetic vision, TAWS, etc. etc. and my as pilot, I will do more with this aircraft (Cirrus SR22T) than with the Piper Archer 3 with only the steam pipes. That is why the accident ratios don't go down when driving cars with anti-skid braking implemented or with an aircraft with more safety features.
All pilots who died in accidents that I personally knew (apart from one who had a medical problem) were killed by "YFR" flying
Oddly enough I don't think that is the case here in the UK, which has had the IMC Rating since c. 1969.
A lot of purely-VFR pilots (I mean pilots who have no instrument skills - official or otherwise) fly into hills, often when scud running (squeezing between the cloudbase and the terrain) or lose control in IMC and crash. It's a large chunk of fatal accidents.
Then we get a number of IR holders who presumably can fly on instruments who get killed flying "VFR" in IMC. The motives are obviously unknown but one can guess they include the >1999kg IFR route charges, a desire to fly a shorter route, a desire to fly below the 0C level (usually not possible on Eurocontrol routes), not carrying oxygen, inability to work out the Eurocontrol routings (not kidding; I know of one such now-dead pilot), or just flying an old shagged heap of junk in which only half the stuff works.
Very few UK pilots are getting killed on DIY approaches, and I am sure all those that do them are doing them with GPS. But that could be because a lot of the UK is flat, especially the south east where most flying is done. There is very little GA in Scotland or Wales.
A few years ago I went to a CAA seminar where they claimed they know of only one fatal accident where the pilot was exercising the privileges of his IMC Rating. It seems incredible but is probably true in the narrow implied context which is UK, IMC, and either IMC flight above the MSA or IMC flight down a published IAP.
I have designed and tested (in VMC) some DIY approaches but to date have not had to use any of them. They were done with GPS waypoints but contained VOR/DME position checks to make 100% sure. The workload in checking the additional fixes is significant and I would fly them only on autopilot.
Before I had the IR, I used to do a lot of this stuff outside the UK. With the IMCR and a nice plane in which everything worked, it was easy. All my long VFR trips were done VMC on top and obviously there were cloud transitions involved. But I always ran the "printed" VFR charts as a moving map - something which almost nobody has even today. I used to get ripped off by a scanning bureau because they didn't like scanning "copyright" maps - to get the map running under Oziexplorer. I spent c. £400 in 2004 on map scanning, with UK to Greece maps. Now they are more like £10...
Perversely, with the IR one spends close to zero time in IMC. Today I did a 4hr flight EGKA-EDAH, "through" a lot of really horrid weather, logging zero instrument time. Without an IR, one would have spent maybe half that time in "VFR" IMC, keeping out of CAS.
I am not a German pilot but I think the puritanical German attitude to aviation regulation is responsible for a lot of accidents there, because clouds form where they feel like forming...
There seems to be a difference in how we perceive risks and it depends on where you fly or learned to fly. I was once flying in a Cirrus with a German pilot in Germany and we were VFR flying to one of the islands in the North (Helgoland) and I "touched" a small cloud and went in and out of it and the German guy went totally nuts as I had touched the clouds while flying VFR. I could have get killed (the whole event took less than a minute flying in and out) or be involved in a collision and for sure was doing something illegal.
Take this above example somewhere else, and the same emotion will simply not appear or occur, but other events might stir emotion that would leave the German pilot with no complaint.
I was once flying in a Cirrus with a German pilot
I bet he was a low time pilot. I used to be like this, too 
Well, he was not low hours (had 1800+ hours) and he actually owned the Cirrus SR22TN aircraft. I was flying it and he as the owner was sitting next to it :-)
In any case, what is considered not done by one pilot seems sometimes to be a non-issue to another pilot. Then, in some countries (e.g. like Germany) the fact that something is not allowed or illegal weighs more than in other countries.
Psychology can play tricks...
Here in the UK the GPS was regarded as illegal, the work of the devil, etc, and this attitude is so widespread (even on pilot forums, most people take care to write that they navigate with a map+stopwatch and the GPS is just a backup, in case they get lynched by their "community") that when one does some sort of test and the examiner is OK with the GPS being used, it feels weird and one feels a pressure to use the navaid receivers. But flying alone I don't feel that and just use the GPS.
A few years ago I flew with a pilot in a homebuilt (an RV) and I (having the controls briefly) flew it into a little cloud. It has a turn coordinator so this was perfectly safe. He had a few thousand hours but got quite worried. It's fair enough for him to try to be 100% legal but someone like that is going to get killed quite rapidly just flying over the sea in 3km vis and no horizon.
This is all very interesting to me. I have an IMCR but NOT and IR - something which I dream of, but time is passing by and the dream keeps fading.
Anyway, can you clarify 'cancel IFR'. Reading between the various lines above it sounds as if this can be (is) done even when in IMC. Sounds, with my little knowledge, ambiguous and a 'no no' to me.
I would have thought in order to 'cancel IFR' it would be mandatory to have transited into VMC.
Is this another grey area where shall we say...... no, lets not say it!!!
IMC is by definition IFR, so you cannot legally cancel IFR unless you are in VFR conditions.
But, due to airspace structures and ATC practices, pilots are sometimes cancelling IFR before they reach VFR conditions. This is illegal but nobody can tell what their actual flight conditions are (even if it may be "obvious" to ATC).
Reading between the various lines above it sounds as if this can be (is) done even when in IMC.
No, VFR requires VMC so you can never cancel IFR when in IMC. You might be able to close your IFR flight plan and continue without ATC/separation in IMC (still IFR) but from what I know this is only possible in the motherland of IMC, the UK.
Despite rumours to the contrary, many countries DO permit IFR in Class G. Germany is the exception. France requires radio contact, but otherwise IFR in class G is fine, for example. The reason the UK is an IFR paradise is not primarily the airspace structure [I would argue that widespread class A is less than paradisiacal], but the availability of a proper instrument rating with reasonable training and testing requirements.
Back to WarleyAir
I would make a big distinction between unsafe ("no no", for example descending below MSA in IMC without a procedure) and not legal (safely descending IFR down to MSA).
Sometimes, to quote an old English proverb, the law is an ass.
