Squirrel, yes, there have been several midair collisions between helicopters in the GOM, all of them fatal. I have personally had many 'near misses', but none since using a TAWS. Transponders are required when flying in the GOM, because we are regularly crossing the ADIZ. It's still possible for a transponder to fail, of course, but every helicopter operating out there has to have one installed and turned on. Otherwise, a pair of F16s will soon be flying in formation with it, or at least trying to.
Flyer43, it's a vicious cycle. Some customers go with the lowest bidder, and some operators bid low by virtue of providing lower safety and maintenance standards, in order to get the business from the cheap customers. They reinforce each other. And there will always be pilots willing to fly for them, just as there are pilots willing to fly for very little money just to build time. If you read this and the other forums, that can't even be iln question. As long as the small operators are not unionized, there is no way to prevent it, and the US labor laws make it very difficult to unionize companies.