There are two other things to speculate on that haven't been discussed much here.
We do not and cannot know what was going through the mind of Kobe's pilot. But there are some clues. In a Facebook thread on this accident, long-time and well-respected former Chief Pilot of PHI, Mike Hurst opines about a certain psychological phenomenon that happens to pilots as they get closer to their destination. It's slightly different from "Get-there-itis" although it falls under that category, I suppose. Mike had a fancy name for it, which I forget at the moment. It's not so much an urge or pressure get where you're going, but a subtle belief as you get closer and closer that you can make it. And Mike certainly knows a thing or two about helicopter pilots.
The other thing nobody is really talking about is fuel. You all know that we helicopter pilots are always battling fuel vs. payload. I suspect that Kobe's pilot took off with "just enough" fuel to get to his destination with the required reserves and not much more. But then Burbank Tower held him out, circling for over 12 minutes. And then, instead of letting him go direct, they told him to go northbound, circumnavigating east of both Burbank and Van Nuys to circle around north of both fields before coming back down south to pick up the 101. I'll bet you that all this circling and rerouting ate into his reserves...which gave him the impetus to pull the power in and keep the speed up when really, in perfect hindsight, we know that he should've slowed that beatch down. And he was a short guy, and his S-76 has a *BIG* glareshield, and slowing an S-76 down brings the nose up, decreasing outward visibility even more... And in the L.A. area you can't just plop an S-76 down in someone's parking lot like you can a 206...
There sure are a lot of pieces to this puzzle! Talk about a guy stuck between a rock and a hard place. Granted, he probably put himself into that jam, but still...