Gareth was highly experienced with many thousands of hours on floats too - which if anything makes it even more unusual.
Sadly, any casual examination of accident reports will show time after time that accident rates and experience levels are not related. The most experienced pilots end up crashing in manners similar to the most inexperienced. The only difference is the level of surprise when our most experienced colleagues end up as an accident statistic.
As for the the "never mind the safety briefing, just head for the suckers gap.." approach to aviation mentioned in a previous post; again, just look at the accident reports from the 60's and 70's to see how that turned out for a lot of people. The hundreds of deaths each year from basically sheer stupidity and ignorance are thankfully a long way behind us. Hopefully only a few people are advocating a return to those days.