Even a well maintained helicopter is a safety nightmare.
I started my career in aerospace at a company that makes helicopter engines and later I became a search and rescue mountaineer/EMT in a county with more helicopters used for SAR than anywhere else in the US. We beat it into our new members "never pass up the opportunity to turn down a helicopter ride".
The mountain rescue association tracks member fatalities and injuries. Helicopter accidents are, by a large margin, the leading cause of line of duty death in mountain rescue, and we spend only a couple percent of our time in them.