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I'm going to cycle home in an hour or so. In order to do that legally, I'm going to have to use a set of lights whose cost is at least 20% of the market value of my bicycle. They bring me no direct benefit (well, perhaps the front light helps me avoid potholes but I can't even see the rear light from my cycling position). Why should I have to shell out on the purchase and running costs of such things purely to help other road users? Shouldn't it just be my choice to take the risk?
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Bookworm, your analogy is flawed. Even if the only other road traffic was bicycles, you would still need those lights to cycle at night if you wanted to avoid running into them and being run into by them.
Now, if bus and truck companies insisted that your puny bike lights cannot be readily seen amid the ligfhts of cars and other motorised traffic, and you therefore constitute a collision risk to them and must take approriate action by fitting a bit of kit that costs twice as much as your bike and consumes power your bike doesn't have, you might have a point.
"But I only ride in cycle lanes", you protest, "never on the road" (let us assume this is in an enlightened country like Denmark which provides real cycle lanes segregated from road traffic).
"Doesn't matter", say the bus and truck companies. "We can't guarantee that you will stick to bike lanes, so you have to have the kit".
Even if we accept your flawed analogy, the cost of your (self-powered, small, and lightweight) bike lights will not be so prohibitive as to prevent you from cycling - in fact the cost is so tiny you probably don't even need to consider it.
Not even remotely the same thing as the threat to recreational GA by the imposition of Mode 'S'.
SSD