Nick,
GH was also a dear friend of mine, but his accident just seemed to illustrate the futility of blaming accidents on design flaws or age as absolutes. There is no such thing as the perfect machine and some things as geoffers mentioned do improve with age (until they get to the point where age-related failures occur - this in any machine, even a human one, is a difficult-to-predict variable). When GH had his accident, it didn't make me want to stop flying or never fly a Sikorsky again (I was flying another, older Sikorsky model at the time). When another dear friend died flying an old Eurocopter model, but with a new problem, a few years ago it also didn't make me want to stop flying or never fly another Eurocopter model.
I think some posters have a slightly simplistic approach to these sorts of problems. It's no good trying to compare a helicopter to a car and say that we're all test pilots for a new model. Helicopters are many times more complicated than cars, and have production runs which are often in the hundreds rather than in the tens of thousands. The majority of helicopters, because they do work of which only they are capable, work in hostile environments. How many cars, 5 hours or more a day, on a daily basis are loaded up to maximum design weight and then operated at maximum design power (sometimes more
) many times a day?
So we have to accept flaws. Everything in life is flawed to some degree. The most important thing surely, is to recognise flaws as soon as possible, then either fix them (not always economically possible), or put in place procedures to nullify or reduce the dangers arising from them.