and rely upon them to do the job for which they were intended. 'bout the only situation in which it might made sense to forego the wear sensors is if one tracks his car and is at the tires for pressure checks frequently and thus can check the brakes too.
But since my usage is strictly street I do not check tire pressures all that often and when I do the brakes are usually hot so I can't stick a finger in behind the rotor to check the gap between the rotor and the caliper. Plus you have to check the leading and trailing pad wear so that is 2 checks per pad, 2 pads per wheel, 4 wheels or 16 checks. Who has time for that? And even if the car is cold one gets his hand rather dirty with brake dust so this is not something one wants to do when he's in nice clothes prior to leaving for work say.
With the brake wear sensors I don't bother to check for wear. As part of my "pre-flight" check I just give a glance at the rotor surfaces looking for any signs of rotor degradation -- very unlikely but I check because its easy and I'm looking there for any sign of a low tire or fluid leaking, etc. -- and note the thickness of the lip around the rotor. A 1mm lip is a sign the rotors are wearing out.
When I have the car in for service most often every 5K miles -- which is twice a year now as I will have put on the car just 10K miles ( no time for road trips ) in the last 12 months (4/5/2016) -- the techs note on the work invoice brake pad thickness and rotor condition thickness along with tread depth of the tires.
So when the warning light comes on I know the brakes are due but I have some time and can generally arrange to take the car in at my convenience rather than have to make a special trip to get the car in right now.
And if you do your own brake jobs, like I used to, you can order the necessary hardware and have it all gathered together and then do the brakes on a nice Saturday morning without having to worry about having to stop in the middle because you find in your haste you are missing a critical piece of hardware.