Why don't you think its pratical? There is nothing magical in the way we operate commercially. In fact in someways because you don't have commercial pressures a private has a lower risk.
I think you answer that yourself in the rest of your post... So much of a professional regulation, such as EU-OPS, is totally irrelevant for private flying. The first thing one would have to do, IMV, is to write (cut and paste) those few parts that are relevant, leaving out gems like ETOPS reserves, admission to flight deck, crew member interphone systems etc etc etc etc. About 3% of the document would remain, and 90% of those 3 % would be the painfully obvious things like W&B calculations. Probably the only useful thing remaining would be the duty time limitations.
At the same time, a private pilot/operator is allowed to, and
supposed to, choose his own risk level. What level of safety the regulator considers appropriate to the fare paying public has nothing whatsoever to do with what risk level I consider acceptable for myself or my passengers (if any).
Then there are many other aspects that are more risky in private, light GA flying, that are not covered in the professional regulations. We need to be able to assess our risk levels when flying with pilots (ourselves!), aircraft and airfields that would be considered inadequate for commercial flying. The commercial regulations then only say "you can't do this", which is of little help to us who will do it anyway and need some method to assess the risk level in doing so.
That, in brief, is why I do not consider the professional and commercial rule books as of much help to private pilots. We need our own methods, tools and guidance (not regulations!), tailored for our own needs. Manuals like the Risk Management Handbook is probably the right way of doing that, and I think bookworm describes the right way of using it for private flight.
But for day to day use, I agree with the rest of you that the tools illustrated there are not well suited. Which is fine I suppose, since it means we're doing it right already!
But there
are those who say, in such guidance material, that quantitative risk assessment tools in the form of matrices should be used for each flight. I will just consider them to be wrong for the time being, until someone can explain why it is a good idea. So far we seem to agree it is not!