Garfs I would not be too worried about them but rather worried that they are worried about you. Sometimes your loved ones know more about your misgivings in life than yourself - so if you feel up for it and you have great co-ord, vision, ability to concentrate and above all a sense of humour - Helo is for you. As for safety agree with other posters that once you are trained and you have decent equipment in a normal operating environment you will have a better chance of saving yourself in a RW aircraft than a FW in the event of most failures besides the tail boom snapping off and the MR blades detaching. There are a few other quite serious issues you could face up to but most have exact equivalents in the FW mode. In fact the only member of my family I would let a FW instructor take up in the beat up c150 at my school would be my mother in law - especially if she was paying.