Hoo boy are we getting off topic. But polzin has hit on a favorite topic of mine, and I just have to reply.
In an earlier post, I said that best thing for a government to do is to prevent one individual’s expression of free will (stupid or otherwise) from harming others. I would agree to no helmet laws, if I didn’t pay large taxes to support the medical treatment of people who don’t use helmets, or seatbelts, or who still smoke. It really pisses me off every pay stub when I think about how much of the money goes to keeping idiots on life support. I would support a law that allowed you to ride without a helmet as long as you opted out of government funded health care.
The FAA, and even TC, try to keep homebuilders from harming themselves, but they don’t make any judgement about what is a “useful” or “meaningful” test program. Useful and meaningful to who? That’s for the experimenter to say, not the government.