Quite right. It's the first 45 seconds that decide wether you live or die, the trick is to use our considerable experience to avoid those situations in the first place...
We should all be by now living with an ethos of 'Safety First and Foremost'. If there's any doubt there is no doubt - Cancel or Divert and live to fight another day.
The most pressing Flight Safety need is for all police helicopters to be operated with an autopilot (the operation of which does not require an IR) and IMMVHO raise the night cloudbase minima from its current 600ft