gatt writes:

Safety should not be regulated. If you can't fly your friggin' airplane
without augering into the side of an apartment building, you shouldn't be
flying your airplane around apartment buildings.

As a pilot-in-command, you're legally permitted to do anything
necessary to ensure the safety of your aircraft and the people aboard
(keeping the safety of others in mind as well, of course), and this
includes ignoring regulations if necessary. However, you have a lot
of explaining to do later on if you break the rules, in some cases.

While you're PIC, then, you're master and commander, subject to a
possible review of your good judgement after you land, if you decide
to break the rules in the name of safety in your own sovereign
estimation.

This is important because you can conceivably do anything if you can
show that safety required it at the time. In this particular, case,
though, as in most cases where regulations are potentially violated,
the safety argument might not work (you can do what you need to remain
safe, but that won't justify carelessly putting yourself in danger in
the first place, when it comes time to review what you did).

--
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