The professionals here don't need a PPL to tell them that there are legal requirements.
I don't need a lawyer to tell me about putting stuff on buildings because I happen to be a property development professional with a PPL - how about you?
Now that we're back on even terms, transferring a large measure of responsibility for pilots (with any qualification) to see and avoid in VFR / SVFR is, in my mind, a retrograde move. Various contributions above mention the issues about yet another alarm in the cabin to ignore, and that building /crane / bridge / the ground isn't in a different position to where is was the last time.
Better weather forecasting, safer company SOP's, and heck, even license and movement restrictions according to weather minima would be much more useful in many more cases. This incident may turn out to be one of them.
This particular accident is so incredibly rare as to be statistically insignificant. Incredibly tragic, but statistically insignificant none the less.