In 1982 or so, when I was a mere lineboy, I witnessed a man walk into the tail rotor of a Bell 222 at the E60th Street Heliport in NYC. This, despite the fact that there were *two* customer service reps loading the pax and their hand luggage. It was a very gruesome death. At the time, Pan American Airlines was running a "free" shuttle service from Manhattan to JFK for their First Class passengers. It was ostensibly a FAR Part-91 operation, and Pan Am didn't want to bother the pax with trivial things like safety briefings. That obviously changed.
Then one day in the late 1980's (when I was then an actual pilot) another pilot and I were in a 206, flying Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall into the city, again landing at E60th Street. He and she had been given the standard Part-135 briefing....in the ship, while it was running, of course. We landed and pointed the ship directly at Operations so they had the most direct path. With the other pilot holding the controls, I hopped out. But simultaneously, Mick hopped out of the left-rear seat and started walking back and I mean right toward the tail rotor. I grabbed him by his boney little shoulders and redirected him to the front. That was the day Mick Jagger almost died.
It's true that people act stupid around helicopters. The excitement of helicopter flying, plus the cacophony of noise from the engine and rotor blades seems to disorient them. In a perfect world, we'd all just shut down for loading and unloading. In the real world, pax are never patient enough to wait for the engine(s) and rotor to stop turning.