I was very late to the party in giving up my toe clips when I finally put SPD pedals on my road bike about 10 years ago. I'm a fairly casual rider who hasn't raced in decades and rarely has time for rides more than 2 hours, and under those conditions the pedals have been great. It's entirely possible that I could try road-specific pedals and discover that I've been missing out all along, but now that I have a tandem and cyclocross bike with the same SPD pedals, it's hard to give up the convenience of being able to use the same shoes on all of my bikes.