Lack of awareness in the dream is THE problem in lucid dreaming (at least it is for me and I'm sure many others)
Although my dream recall isn't too bad, my awareness in the dream is poor. I've only done an RC that caused an LD twice. Usually I end up doing an RC after I have become lucid just to confirm.
Although I do waking RCs, it seems very difficult to make them truly critical, and for me they just aren't bleeding over into my dreams.
One thing I have noticed more recently is that my dreams are more like normal life,with very little crazy things going on, which probably makes spotting it as a dream more difficult.