I confirm there is a risk in flying with sling loads. You mentioned not to fly with sling loads over public areas. OK
But i stated there are allways risks around the helicopter operation. We can try to count now the risk factor of a sling operation. We can count now the risk of any helicopter operation. On which risk factor number you wanna stop the ops?
I'm also on your side, that the laws should build the basics and the operator must try to find the safest way on the special day of ops. In this sadly accident there are no questions about the aerial laws in Austria. It's in law to fly over cable cars with sling loads. This is confirmed by several authorithies. The glacier isn't a dense populated area. It was a "one- in a - million" accident to lost the load and followed by a direct hit of the cable. I hope that this company and other operators find other ways of their ops in dense populated areas. But in this area the ops seems ok to me. If the investigators find out that the pilot have overflown the cars in very low altitude, i would find such flying risky and not to declare. But at the moment investigators doesn't speak from risky flying or low level cruising.
The questions stays "What if the news chopper chrashed in the US, have killed some people on the ground or fired up the building. No news choppers, sorry, no helicopters above cities?"
With overflying this area (over the city) and the people around there was also a specified risk number.