Dan - as helo pilots we all can all deal with the fact that sometimes sh8t happens, machines fail and people die but we are talking about an industry that is supposed to have moved into the 21st century.
Passengers in offshore helos should expect to travel in the best safety the industry can manage after all, that is what their employers are paying for.
When a helicopter is marketed as aggresively on a safety ticket as the S92 was, everyone assumed that it really represented a new level of helicopter safety and crashworthiness but we appear to have been short-changed, the manufacturers and regulators have conspired to set poor standards that can be worked around instead of exceeded.
I know the stock answer to this is that every aircraft has its teething problems because that is what often happened in the past; that is not an excuse any more, enough helicopters have been built and crashed to know what works and what doesn't. Building a helicopter to work a long way over the sea (either offshore or SAR) without appropriate redundancy or emergency backup for major components is just bad engineering and bad business.