Professional traders absolutely use Bollinger Bands, treating volatility as seriously as price itself. While many retail traders focus on where price is, professional traders tend to pay just as much attention to volatility as price.
Notable pros include Linda Raschke, who combines them with RSI for her "Holy Grail" setup, and John Bollinger himself, who created specialized techniques like Bollinger Band Width.
Pros identify the volatility regime first, whether squeezing, expanding, walking the band, or mean-reverting, then apply the matching strategy rather than blindly fading every band touch.