Do ye think TAWS or EGPWS will help decrease such accidents over time?
I used to fly a Seneca VFR around Europe, including the Alps, Pyrenees and Norwegian fjords. I found the addition of non-TAWS terrain awareness very very useful when I fitted an MX20 (essentially TAWS-like but without the advisory and command alerts). You could scale up to 100nm or more away and judge the relative height of mountains and work out options for an "out" if things got marginal or worse weather-wise. Even in perfect VFR it helped planning if routes and levels changed.
Moving to a full EGPWS unit and flying upper airways IFR, I have found the terrain function less frequently useful - it is there for the (hopefully) very very rare occassion when you might go badly wrong, whereas the VFR terrain awareness was always regularly useful when mountains or significant terrain were around.
For VFR flight over terrain (especially 'going places' VFR when the risk of inadvertent marginal VMC or IMC is higher) and IFR over mountains in non-pressurised a/c (when weather or icing might force a loss of terrain seperation) I think TAWS-type equipment has a very major safety benefit.
This used to be a >$20,000 cost but is now much more accessible with the Garmin TAWS upgrade or the GMX200
rgds
421C