How exactly does fog and low visibility lead helicopter accidents so often without mid-air collision and if they are not planning a landing?

Question

I can understand how low visibility will cause a crash during landing or take off. I can also understand how it could lead to collisions with tall structures like masts and trees. However, in many of these cases it doesn’t seem like they collided with anything. They seem to drop out of the sky “due to low visibility”.

In: Other

Answer 1

Because you can’t see anything out of the window the only way you know what angle you’re at is to very carefully watch your instruments. Turbulence can also make it feel like you’re turning or speeding up or slowing down differently to how you actually are (Somatogravic illusions)

So if you stop paying extremely close attention to instruments then, say, wrongly feel you’re suddenly turning hard left you might jam the control stick hard right to “correct” and go into a hard right turn instead, falling because the rotors aren’t pointing downward, and hit the ground in seconds before you realize your mistake.