A few years ago I went on a visit to the AAIB. There was a slide show covering a number of accidents involving commercial helicopter pilots, fully instument rated, who had crashed due to bad weather.
They had tried to analyse why such accidents had occurred and the conclusion was that even though these pilots were very capable of flying in the bad weather, it was the transition from VMC to IMC which actually caused the problem.
If they were established on instruments they would not have a problem, but when the weather was bad but they were still just able to continue visually, and they then flew in to IMC that was when the trouble started.
As the cloud rushed by them, they instinctively pulled back, not initially realising they were climbing and the airspeed declining, after which it all started to go from bad to worse.
The message from the AAIB was that if you think you stand a chance of flying into IMC the important thing to do is to establish yourself flying solely on the instruments BEFORE it happens.
I seem to recall some figures somewhere that stated that if you flew into IMC you had something like 11 seconds before you adopted an unusual attitude, and 40 seconds before that unusual attitude became unrecoverable. Not long.
Shortly after the AAIB visit I was very close to home and pressing on in bad weather. I had a brush with IMC that could have easily resulted in me being added to the AAIB statistics. The combination of the AAIB visit and my own near disaster, has left me with a much greater respect for the weather.
In the face of other private pilots who wish to press on in dreadful conditions I am happy to say that I have adopted cowardice as means of survival which has stood me in good stead. I fully intend that if it turns out to be helicopters that kill me, it wont be because I was stupid enough to be flying in appalling weather conditions.