If your AC's low enough that you need to rely on non-AC methods of defence, why not? At the very least it's nice to hit with your later iterative attacks, or combat maneuvers against hard targets, or * Assault feats.
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Pretty much if you have another way to compensate for your low ac, damage reduction, fast healing etc...you can afford to use reckless abandon. It should be noted tho, that past level 9+, reckless abandon is the best bang for your buck, since your ac would be too low to matter vs most foes at these levels.
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On a barbarian, at least in the type of games, I play (homegame) when enemy hits for 25 to 35 by level 10, having an ac of 29 is the same as having an ac of 15.
An AC of 29 at level 10 is pretty decent when unbuffed. (It could certainly be better - but decent.)
Let's look at some CR10 enemies -
Melee greatsword +21/+16/+11 (3d6+15) or 2 slams +20 (1d8+10)
From a full attack from the fire giant's sword - at an AC of 29 you'd take an average of 33.66 damage. At an AC of 15 you'd take an average of 75.74 damage.
Melee bite +20 (2d6+10/19–20), 2 claws +19 (1d8+7), 2 wings +14 (1d6+3), tail slap +14 (1d8+10)
From a full attack from the Adult White Dragon - at an AC of 29 you'd take an average of 33.17 damage. At an AC of 15 you'd take an average of 68.14 damage.
So - from looking at these two CR 10 monsters - it looks like you take more than twice as much damage when your AC is 15 than when your AC is 29. Seems pretty significant to me. (Of note - I picked two CR 10 monsters at random. While I'm sure there are monsters where the difference is less - I'm also sure I could cherry-pick ones which proved my point even better.)
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High dr only really requires 2 feats, 4 if you weren't planning on getting endurance and die hard.
Stalwart and improved stalwart.
My PFS barbarian with his 8 AC would only take 2 damage on average from the above dragon with the DR 15/- stalwart gets him to.
He'd take more on average than that. He'd take 2 damage if the dragon didn't crit and rolled average damage on every damage roll, and didn't use power attack (which it has). Any of the swings could hurt on a crit - the tail slap could hurt with a high damage roll without a crit - and considering DR the bite alone would average more than 2 sans crit chance.
With DR in the mix - the math involved gets a bit more complex - and I feel too lazy to do it right now - but it'd be closer to 10ish average damage without PA, and with PA I'd ballpark it somewhere in the 50's. (While vs AC29 and no DR the average damage with PA would actually go down slightly.)
Who actually fights CR10 stuff at level 10 as anything other than massed chew-toys?
Barbarians do not excel at AC.
The ability to negate the penalty from power with reckless abandon basically makes each of your iterative attacks step up in chance to the previous attack (at sufficiently high levels). It is a strong rage power.
Personally, if you can find a way to mitigate enough damage by having a hyper offense you will end up taking less damage overall. Also keep a steady supply of wands of cure light wounds for someone to use on you, after combat.
Reckless abandon, decent dex, combat reflexes, and Come and Get Me works out really well. Why? Because every time your opponents hits you, you get a chance to hit them back. Assuming you are the standard two handed power attack build, you will frieght train them into damage town. You'll be dealing so much damage that most characters would be afraid to attack you because they'll think they're going to die before they kill you (this actually happened frequently in a campaign I played). The enemy would hit me easily because of low AC, but my attack got to resolve first and I would deal them a 1/4 to 1/3 of their hit points in a single hit. They would usually back off after that. Especially when they knew I was about to full attack them. Or, I would pounce on them and they would have only a little health left. My Come and Get Me attack would kill them before they could land a hit.