Perhaps a controversial / untrue / unreasonable point, but in my current opinion:
I quite rarely feel as though I really 'require' such levels of performance from a tyre.
Every-day driving I am far from pushing the laws of physics. Even when being quite brisk going about my business, I must be quite a margin away from exceeding the levels of available grip.
If I were in need of such levels of performance, then I'd surely be driving in a manner that my insurance company would find worrying anyway - I doubt that they'd be much placated by my pointing out that the tyres are premium. Thinking distance is a sizeable constant, regardless of what you're driving.
Not that I'm in any way the best, most sensible, safest driver on the roads at the moment, but I do think that the dangers I face have come from either: someone behaving in an unreasonable/unpredictable way, or me having some kind of lapse and probably not being where I should be at that time.
The latter I don't think can be helped by any form of equipment on the car (other than maybe a few cans of coffee in the car 5 minutes in advance?), and the former should be seen as a situation forced upon me that is the responsibility of those breaking decent driving protocols - it shouldn't really be a requirement for people to slam on the anchors so that other folk can pull out of a side road without looking - if I hit them, then that should be their insurer's problem, and it shouldn't be my responsibility to spend more to put up with their idiocy and have them avoid the consequences of it.
I had both recently which happened to involve heavier-than-usual braking on cheapest of the cheap tyres (probably mismatched) but they did the job with room to spare I'm sure.
Situational awareness and driving to conditions are worth many times more safety points than a 0.7s better tyre in day-to-day activities, I think.
I'm sure there are some totally horrendous tyres out there but I don't think I've discovered them so far.
It is nice to have good wet tyres though - not that the original Bridgestones were meant to be either much good in the wet or particularly cheap, mind you.
This is just a thought about the insurance point ^ I do appreciate good rubber when needed, don't worry ("when needed" likely to now end up being: next week when it rains and I plow into an oil tanker when a set of Contis would have made the difference
).