I spent a lot of time professionally, teaching and mentoring junior SAR pilots and Captains for the very good reason that if you make crap choices or fail to plan properly for a SAROp, you can get quickly caught out and end up in trouble. The first rule of first aid is not to become a casualty yourself and the same applies to SAR
Your final sentence is true of any operation
crab, not just SAR. Spent nearly three decades flying for an oil company owned and operated off shore operation and the operation paid no attention to rules or regs, and the aircrew to a man, including check and training, happily accepted the status quo, me included until the lights turned on in the final few years, the phrase "Normalisation of Deviance" covers the scenario at work. One of the check and trainers later went on to be the organisations regulatory overseer (FOI - Flight Operations Inspector), didn't change anything, nor did it change anything when the regulatory head office learnt of how operations were conducted