Hovering is the signature helicopter move for laymen, but it's also considerably hard, and "high hover takeoff/landing" is, IIRC, one of the hardest maneuvers (it's been years since I've read the pilot's textbook, though)

There's also a lot of other things that can impact the event - for example, the crash I mentioned involved bad weather, tired crew, and losing both engines at once due to icing. They autorotated and nobody died... but they fell into a forest, landed hard enough to destroy undercarriage, and the first officer survived by accident due to helping get passengers into position when a tree smashed his station.

EDIT: corrected captain to first officer, as visible in this photo: https://static.polityka.pl/_resource/res/path/bc/08/bc086fae... (it's Mi-8, so captain sits on the left, not on the right as is normal in western helicopters)

if a helicopter hovers high in the air it's not dangerous because they have time to turn that height/energy into forward motion. see "dead man's curve" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_height%E2%80%93velo...

Yes - at height, they tend to move forwards rather than hovering in one spot to avoid getting stuck in a column of downwards moving air: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_ring_state