This was my primary motivator to trying clipless. Not so much for trail riding issues, but more for carving high speed turns on roads. My old toe clips were getting horribly scratched up from dragging on pavement when not clipped in.
What kind of mountain biking are you doing that involves carving high speed turns on roads?

That's what I've been doing now - clipping out of the SPDs for the gnarly stuff. However, the resulting reduction of control makes the gnarlies even gnarlier.
Standing on your little SPDs? Yes, that would give anyone problems.

My DH has the crank bros combos.. those work too but it sounds like you don't really want to do anything different.