It would be hard to respect controlled airspace when you are having the flight of your life, as apparently he was.
I doubt that the authorities were even aware that he was on the fringes of their airspace. He was not a licensed pilot at that time so he was not aware that he could have filled out a form for the NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System and probably gotten off with a slap on the wrist or more likely just been lost in the shuffle. But he had heard some horror stories and did not want to call any attention to himself.