Gordy
I am from the UK - obviously. For the record, I've never complained about the CAA (apart from its bureaucracy and antiquated processes) and I'm not suggesting for a second that CAA regulations are 'imposed' on US pilots; however, I am suggesting that controls are not tight enough - equally obviously.
As a SFH'er I flew with a safety pilot in LV as a I described - unbelievably - and I was aware that the 20 helicopters were on a set path, however the ATC neither told me that, nor provided any information that might have prevented me colliding with any of those 20 helicopters. It was quite clearly up to each individual to avoid another.
Your Hawaii anecdote is interesting, but I too have flown in Hawaii and the experience was totally different to that of Las Vegas; a handful of machines over a wide area, all of which was sparsely populated and rural. In LV, flying a single engined machine over an intensely populated area at night and with a lot of other traffic is quite different and needs regulating, as it seems, does NYC.
TTB