The issue isn't whether it'll hit a branch, it's whether it will let go once it happens. Get a branch inside your bar ends, and you're going down no matter what. Smack it with your regular bars, and you have a decent chance of recovering.

And the recovery is basically to turn your bars in the direction that helps the branch slide off the end, which would be steering toward the brush except that a quick torque at speed will counter-steer, taking you away from the brush.

No, at a minimum the bar has to be moved farther than the bar end length to get the branch loose. That leads to a much larger deviation in the wheel. Now add in that you are moving forward while this is happening. It all combines to make it much, much harder to come off the branch.

If you catch a branch with a bar end while moving you are going to eat some dirt.

I should've made it more explicit, but I was expanding on the case of not having bar ends.