In my time in IT, that's what I've seen. There was an update to the 3com 905 drivers back in the day that BSOD's systems, since then there have been more rigorous driver testing. After that there was the recent Windows 7 update that had a problem on some systems. We didn't see any issues on any of our some 400 Windows 7 systems, but I did verify it was real. MS rolled it back with another automated patch.
Oh and I suppose XP SP3 though that wasn't automatic, and the only systems it "broke" were ones with Malware infections so I hardly count that.
So... ya... Personally, I'll take an issue ever decade or so in trade for having a system that it up to date. However, if you'd rather not patch your stuff go ahead, just don't do it on my network, I'll block you.