N97 well spoken, I agree withh all you presented here. I also witnessed a guy stall spin a dg100 when a tow went bad. All the guy needed to do was drop the nose and land straight ahead. Thankfully he survived with only minor injuries. I presented the same perspective in an earlier posting relating to low-saves should be a rare occurrance and not a habbit. If for no other reason than they are woefully innefficient, it takes forever to dig out of a low save while everyone else is scooting along overhead on course.
Getting to bobw's initial interest, the mental aspect of the question, I guess it does have alot to do with ones perspective. Much of the faulty decision making regarding low saves is imho due to "modern" perspectives on soaring. One example that comes to mind is the reluctance/fear of an off field landing. While putting down in a field used to be a daily occurance with low performance ships, today it is relatively rare. So I think there becomes a mental reluctance toward having to accept the enevitable land out or the necessarly low level save. Since guys dont do it much, they dont think about all that a low save entails, they dont simulate the situation to gain real life experience, thus when confronted with the real thing, all sorts of mistakes are made.