Kudos to Wendell for his quest. Indeed, the poor safety record of GA compared to CAT should not be considered as given.
IMHO this evil has two roots. One is based in training and the other in the equipment we operate. Both are subject to regulation by EASA and both seem to be regulated commerce-centric rather than safety-centric.
In regard to training, GA means essentially single pilot no-safety nets non-routine operations. For-profit training organizations, "anecdotally" use the cheapest equipment and offset the risks as much as allowed. The tragedy is that what is allowed is aligned with CAT, where multi crew, safety nets, routine operations is the norm thinking that this rises the bar, while in fact it lowers the bar.
In regard to equipment, I can't think of any incentive for OEMs to add risk reducing features beyond the minimum requirements, if this could bring the cost up, or the performance down. Also no incentive to add features which could facilitate single pilot-oriented training like for example in the military.
In conclusion, shifting more responsibility to pilots as suggested in intro, does not seem right to me. I am sure none of the GA victims wanted to die and they all had EASA licenses. This begs the question, whether an EASA license is adequate proof of ability to weigh own capacity versus risks?
