@Agile is correct. When teaching/demonstrating Vortex ring recovery - settling with power - or whatever you wish to call it, you need to concentrate and physically fly the helicopter and establish the necessary parameters to demonstrate the manoeuvre. The helicopter gives you clues it is not happy doing what you are asking it to do. So pilots who inadvertently enter vortex ring state are more than likely not concentrating on things they should be concentrating on immediately before entering this predicament. And when I hear excuses from pilots who pancake their helicopter in the steaming swamp late on a sunny afternoon when doing a low level pipeline inspection, and then blame it on an autopilot malfunction, yeah right, what a load of bollocks.
The big thing is, when you are low and slow in a helicopter, it is critical to know where the wind is coming from. Whether vortex ring state onset happens at 30/20/10 knots or 100/200/300 ROD or in any combination of parameters, knowing those parameters is secondary to knowing where the wind is coming from, concentrating on the job at hand, and listening to the helicopter if it starts to complain about what you are asking it to do.
And @paco, I highly respect your experience, but I'd need to think about that explanation about being heavier is less likely to result in VR. I'm inclined to disagree with you on that one. At the training weights we work in I'd need to feel a little braver - or higher - about being heavier before experimenting with that one.