Very Interesting viewpoint. While I am not arguing about the efficiency or lack thereof of the FAA, this crash is 100% the responsibility of the pilot. To enter into Marginal VFR conditions in rising terrain is dangerous. Terrain warning equipment on a helicopter is also an interesting idea. Nevertheless, you got no business being at or below 1000 feet when the hills around you are higher, UNLESS YOU CAN SEE the terrain. Try that in any aircraft. BTW the entire time his TAWS would be screaming “terrain terrain” visual conditions or not. By definition, helicopters fly close to the terrain regularly and well below that acceptable for most other forms of flight. Why? Because we can hover and can land almost anywhere. When the pilot got to Van Nuys and asked to transition, the tower questioned why he wasn’t on a special VFR clearance, because it was already below VFR minimums for normal flights. Then after getting his code, SOCAL couldn’t see him due to terrain. The 11 minutes he waited for clearance he was hovering over a parking lot with low clouds above and rising terrain around. It was that moment when he made a climbing left hand turn INTO the clouds and impacted seconds later. As a 6000 hour commercial rated pilot who used to own and operate a heli almost daily, I agree with the NTSB conclusion, not so much with all the equipment recommendations. Very simply, the pilot had made this run probably hundreds of times and was over confident and pressed on into IFR conditions near rising terrain, costing the lives of all souls on board. How can an operator anticipate this marginal VFR day is better or worse than the last one. BTW there was no VFR traffic flying into or out of Van Nuys at the time. No police helicopters flying either. Its the answer to the oldest question in flying, “Do you want to be there when you get there?”