Munnyspinner,
You hit the nail on the head. From whichever angle you look at things, it all comes down to the nut behind the wheel.
You can have an ultra sophisticated aircraft, reams of paperwork and yards of regulations to protect pilots and their passengers. However, the nasty little human factors pops its head up at every stage and nullifies everything.
The military squadron concept mitigates this a bit. There are supervisors, mentors and peers looking over one's shoulder,always on the ready to castigate one for a poor decision. In the civilian single pilot world,not so much.
When I am on shift for twelve hours,I AM my company.Operations, safety, business development,public relations,maintenance and so on. That can be intimidating at times, especially when you are new to the game.That is where good human factors research and knowledge would help.From the time of recruitment to retirement.No amount of legislation will help.
As we all know, one cannot legislate human behavior.
Alt3.