Pace,
There is another risk multiplier here, which is that picking up ice does not necessarily mean instant death. I'm sorry about your mate, but his experience does not mean that an unexpected ice encounter in a non-deiced aircraft will kill everyone.
So, if we accept Peter's suggestion that (if you are educated and sensible) mostly there will be no icing, then multiply by the Timothy factor that even if you do, you will almost certainly survive, you end up accepting that death by icing is a rare event which you can rank with death by suction failure or death by engine failure.