Because if the pilot has to pay for the flight himself, he won't be
carrying complete strangers (no incentive) and thus exposing them to
risk. Therefore, to take away the pilot's incentive, he's made to bear
the entire cost. It really does make sense.

Not to me.

Take away the pilot's incentive to fly, and he flies less. He becomes
less safe. He is more likely to fly down a runway into the face of a
152 coming the other way.

The incentive for carrying complete strangers isn't the money. It is
the sharing of the joy of flying. If the point is to save complete
strangers from risk, then private pilots should simply not be allowed to
fly complete strangers. Maybe they shouldn't be allowed to carry
passengers at all.

A person who knows the pilot but does not know aviation is really not in
a much better position to assess the risk. It's not about (or shouldn't
be about) assessing risk that way, so much as presenting a flight as if
it were a commercial endeavor, with commercial safety standards.

Jose
--
Quantum Mechanics is like this: God =does= play dice with the universe,
except there's no God, and there's no dice. And maybe there's no universe.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.