Copied nearly verbatim from my post on this in another thread back in July 2017...
For all you Robinson bashers, a quick search of the NTSB database shows that, for 2017 through the end of July (the last time I looked at the stat's), the following breakdown of accidents by manufacturer occurred:
Sikorsky - 2 (11 fatalities total)
Schweizer - 3
All other types - 6 (2 fatalities total)
Hughes/MD - 8 (6 fatalities total)
Airbus/Eurocopter - 9 (1 fatality total)
Bell - 25 (20 fatalities total)
Robinson - 34 (17 fatalities total)
Bell seems to be holding its own with Robinson in the accident and fatality departments, at least in the US (can't speak to worldwide). I did this sort of quick study for 2016 and Bells actually had more accidents and fatalities than Robinsons in the US. And yet they are one of the most respected makes. Should we not be flying Bell helicopters, either? Of course not.
I'm unable to find any data showing hours flown by each make, but it's easy to suspect that both Robinson and Bell are the busiest. Given that Robinsons do the bulk of the training in the US, that's a lot of hours doing high risk stuff. Similarly, it's easy to visualize that Bells are doing the bulk of other types of high risk work (long line, etc.) Busy + risky = more opportunity for accidents.
If anyone had any rate based (hour normalized) statistics for the US, by make, for a recent year (modern Robinsons with modern training, and all the latest AD's and SB's complied with, and definitely not pre-SFAR 73), I'd be very interested to see them.