Give up pinky, you won’t get thru to Dick. He has a bee in his bonnet about this and won’t change his opinion, nor accept that the pilot could have done something better. The pilot wasn’t “forced”- its just emotive language that’s unnecessary; and honestly it detracts from the point he is trying to make.
did the lack of clearance affect the outcome of the flight? Yes.
but does the lack of a clearance in general cause a fatal accident? No. I imagine there are probably many denials of clearances in a day. Yet they don’t end up in fatal.
could the pilot have done something else? Yeah. Definitely. We all know that, but some don’t admit it because doing so doesn’t help their cause.
It’s up to us driving the things to be safe, regardless of ATC. Maybe if he had a current biannual that point could have come up and we’d never be talking about this accident.