Helicopter safety improvement has slowed and airworthiness failures contribute very little to the accident rates and risk. Most helicopter accidents are pilot/human-error related, but root causes are rarely documented or understood. These accidents causes cannot be corrected so accidents continue to occur. Understanding/documenting exactly what happened in the cockpit during an accident sequence, including crash kinematics, is necessary to allow corrections. Future crash survival design criteria need to be improved with actual accident crash data. A cockpit information recorder (CIR) using a camera, microphone, and GPS could be a "poor man' FDR/CVR" to document what really occurred during an accident and crash sequence. CIR criteria, cost effectiveness, and timeliness of accident investigations are discussed. CIR would significantly (1) reduce accident causes, (2) improve understanding of actual crash conditions and accident causes, and (3) increase occupant survival, thus permit appropriate corrections to achieve the next safety plateau.
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