7 ms·

Pilot of drone that struck woman at Pride Parade gets 30 days in jail

43 points by altstar 10y ago

robmate 10y ago
"A man who was found guilty of reckless endangerment after his drone injured two people during Seattle’s 2015 Pride Parade, including a woman knocked unconscious, was sentenced Friday to 30 days in jail." He knocked a woman unconscious!! 30 days in jail seems a little bit off to me but he could've injured someone badly...
- na85 10y ago
  As we're starting to learn from pro sports, concussions are serious injuries that can have lifelong effects on cognitive function. He did injure someone badly. To get hit in the head hard enough to lose consciousness is not a minor incident.
  - mason240 10y ago
    Regardless of how lasting the effects of the concussions were, at least one person's life has been significant set back here.
    - falcolas 10y ago
      I think you mean that two people's lives have seen significant setback here. Brain injuries in general and concussions specifically are not minor injuries: their effects can last from months to lifetimes, impacting work and private lives. I had a friend who "hit his head" and went unconscious; he died. We were warned that even if he lived, he would likely be a different person. If all the woman suffers is a few months of impaired cognitive functionality, she will be lucky.
- melling 10y ago
  Someone still has to die before some people realize how dangerous drones can be? https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2015/07/19/dangerous-drones-daily/ https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2015/07/19/dangerous-drones-dai...
  - mrfusion 10y ago
    Boomerangs too!
    - melling 10y ago
      You must think you're on Reddit where you're suppose to provide the best fuckwad response. Do you really need someone to explain why a flying remotely controlled device, with a large mass, and high rate of speed is dangerous? And yes, if you throw a boomerang into a crowd and knock someone out, shouldn't there be some form of punishment?
  - levelist_com 10y ago
    Anything can be dangerous in the hands of an imbecile.
    - melling 10y ago
      What do you think you're adding to the conversation by saying "Anything can be dangerous in the hands of an imbecile?" 40,000 people died in automobile accidents last year. We had several million other accidents with cars. You don't need to be an imbecile to have an accident. Objects controlled by humans moving at a high rate of speed turn out to be dangerous, and great care is required. How much karma do I have to waste explaining such a simple idea to people? I'm done.
      - 193120910 10y ago
        You absolutely need to be a) an imbecile or b) deliberately reckless to cause a car accident. Driving is really quite simple.
      - 10y ago
- chrisseaton 10y ago
  > a little bit off to me I can't even work out if you think it's too high or too low. You say that the woman was knocked unconscious with lots of exclamation marks as if you think that's really serious, but then you say he could have injured her badly, as if you think being knocked unconscious isn't a bad injury.
  - neaden 10y ago
    >but then you say he could have injured her badly, as if you think being knocked unconscious isn't a bad injury. I blame TV and Movies for this, we see people get knocked unconscious all the time and it's always treated as this minor thing, like we just have an off button that takes a good hard knock. In real life of course, any blow that knocks you unconscious has a very real risk of killing you.
twiss 10y ago
This case seems similar to me to, for example, a flower pot falling off a balcony [1]. Does anyone know what the sentence would be for something like that? [1]: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/woman-fights-for-life-after-paddington-pub-flower-pot-falls-on-her-head-6525094.html http://www.standard.co.uk/news/woman-fights-for-life-after-p...
- rubidium 10y ago
  There's a difference between accidents and recklessness (similar situations arise in driving). This was charged as reckless. The flower pot is different in that regard.
  - Confusion 10y ago
    In general? I would expect that if you e.g. put a free-standing flower pot on the edge of your balcony fence, it would still be considered reckless.
    - masklinn 10y ago
      I would expect that as well, and if you throw a flower pot back and forth between two balconies.
    - squarefoot 10y ago
      The problem here is IMO the search for someone responsible to punish at any cost. I'm not saying the guy shouldn't be punished, but like the flower pot example... what if I put a table tennis ball in a similar place and it falls hitting someones nose? The ball is totally innocuous but the surprise makes the poor chap fall and get a fatal injury on the head. Would a court send me to jail for murder?
      - Confusion 10y ago
        Probably not, because you could not reasonably expect the table tennis ball to lead to injury. But if we change it to a basketball ball, I would again expect you would be punished, though not with jailtime. And of course things depend on the height of balcony, whether the accused seems regretful or thinks he did nothing wrong, etc. And being held responsible for the medical costs is probably enough of a punishment.
foxhop 10y ago
I feel the same about cars as I do about drones in that they are very dangerous. The car industry had a history of blaming the victim as a "jay-walker" and even lobbying for laws against them. In another universe we have a name for somebody that gets in the way of a drone, and the victim is punished for not wearing a helmet.
- peterclary 10y ago
  Indeed. http://www.citylab.com/commute/2012/04/invention-jaywalking/1837/ http://www.citylab.com/commute/2012/04/invention-jaywalking/...
- jasonkostempski 10y ago
  Whats the name for someone thats walks across subway tracks? I don't think the car industry is to blame, it's the city planner that put streets right next to sidewalks with no physical barriers and now also puts bike paths weaving throughout the streets and sidewalks.
  - scarecrowbob 10y ago
    This breaks down, because there have been plenty of uses for streets without cars, but there aren't a lot of uses for tracks without railcars. If you understand that the streets and roads have always been used for many kinds of traffic, and that limiting these areas to automobile traffic was not initially considered the only natural response to the advent of cars, the OP's point makes more sense.
- closeparen 10y ago
  Yeah, we took some minor capabilities away from pedestrians: 1) Ability to enter the roadway at any time, rather than after checking that it's clear. 2) Ability to walk down the middle of the roadway instead of the sidewalk. And in exchange, we vastly expanded the amount of commutable land per travel minute, resulting in more space for most people. Also affordable inter-city travel and the National Parks. I'd do it again. Just as suburbia is seen by some contemporary progressives as a great social evil, the crowded conditions of urban tenements were the great problem of our time to progressive visionaries back then [0]. Walking as a primary form of transportation, and the extreme density it required of the working class, was not a scalable, long-term, or humane solution. We should have leaned into streetcars instead of personal cars in order to spread out, sure, but then it'd just be some other kind of vehicle making the streets dangerous for pedestrians. No great social problem is solved by drones being welcome at low altitude over crowds. News and public safety organizations already knows how to use real helicopters in that context. There isn't some latent use case for aerial photography that we're all suffering without, it's a nice-to-have, and the decision that it isn't worth the tradeoffs is much more clear-cut. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State_Tenement_House_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State_Tenement_House_...
zach417 10y ago
I assume it's easier to think this kind of sentence is okay when you don't own a drone nor want to own one; it's why taxing cigarettes is the go-to funding tool for increases in education spending. I don't smoke, so who cares? So, I'm assuming this is why the judge and attorney were so aggressive with the sentencing, but 30 days in jail is beyond the realm of reasonableness. I'm all for having the defendant pay restitution, but jail does no one any amount of good.
- rlpb 10y ago
  I can't speak for the US, but in the UK it is illegal for a pilot of a manned aircraft to overfly a crowd below the height above which gliding clear is possible after an engine failure. In any case, the pilot needs a license to fly the aircraft at all, and getting one needs extensive training and demonstration of competence. Helicopters are "aircraft". Exceptions exist for medevac and police. This rule comes from a consideration of crowd safety. I'm not suggesting that exactly the same rigor must be applied so drones. After all they're smaller and likely to kill far fewer people after an accident involving a crowd. However, I think 30 days is entirely appropriate for someone who was reckless with people's lives under the circumstances. This assumes he was reckless; the article doesn't say if the court decided that.
  - pc86 10y ago
    Flight student here - the US is 500' above "non-congested areas" and 1000' above "congested areas," however neither are strictly defined. As my instructor put it, "if you could land on someone's head, consider it congested." The except is air shows, where there is no minimum, and some special use areas such as Military Operations Areas. If you're operating a drone for commercial purposes you need a Private Pilot's License and UAS (Unmanned Aircraft Systems) certificate. This guy owns an aerial photography company but it's not clear if the drone use was hobbyist in nature or if he was getting footage of the event for commercial purposes. Regardless, if he's found criminally liable due to how he operated the drone, it's almost a certainty that the FAA will be coming after every license he has.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
yabatopia 10y ago
Why is it relevant that it happened on a Pride Parade, as the headline suggest? "Pilot of drone that struck woman at parade gets 30 days in jail" is perfectly fine. Now the current headline suggests it could have been a hate crime (it's not), or that a pride parade is something particular (it's not). It's like "Black man robs woman" instead of "Man robs woman": a little bit too specific and suggestive.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Why is it relevant that it happened on a Pride Parade, as the headline suggest? Because people familiar with the initial incident will more readily connect this story of the legal outcome with the incident with that context. The story isn't just a standalone item, it's part of a series of articles stretching back to the initial incident. [0] [0] You can follow the whole thing back with hyperlinks from the latest article to each previous story, back to: http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/woman-knocked-unconscious-by-falling-drone-during-seattles-pride-parade/ http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/woman-knocked...

43 points by altstar 10y ago

"A man who was found guilty of reckless endangerment after his drone injured two people during Seattle’s 2015 Pride Parade, including a woman knocked unconscious, was sentenced Friday to 30 days in jail." He knocked a woman unconscious!! 30 days in jail seems a little bit off to me but he could've injured someone badly...

na85 10y ago
As we're starting to learn from pro sports, concussions are serious injuries that can have lifelong effects on cognitive function. He did injure someone badly. To get hit in the head hard enough to lose consciousness is not a minor incident.
- mason240 10y ago
  Regardless of how lasting the effects of the concussions were, at least one person's life has been significant set back here.
  - falcolas 10y ago
    I think you mean that two people's lives have seen significant setback here. Brain injuries in general and concussions specifically are not minor injuries: their effects can last from months to lifetimes, impacting work and private lives. I had a friend who "hit his head" and went unconscious; he died. We were warned that even if he lived, he would likely be a different person. If all the woman suffers is a few months of impaired cognitive functionality, she will be lucky.
melling 10y ago
Someone still has to die before some people realize how dangerous drones can be? https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2015/07/19/dangerous-drones-daily/ https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2015/07/19/dangerous-drones-dai...
- mrfusion 10y ago
  Boomerangs too!
  - melling 10y ago
    You must think you're on Reddit where you're suppose to provide the best fuckwad response. Do you really need someone to explain why a flying remotely controlled device, with a large mass, and high rate of speed is dangerous? And yes, if you throw a boomerang into a crowd and knock someone out, shouldn't there be some form of punishment?
- levelist_com 10y ago
  Anything can be dangerous in the hands of an imbecile.
  - melling 10y ago
    What do you think you're adding to the conversation by saying "Anything can be dangerous in the hands of an imbecile?" 40,000 people died in automobile accidents last year. We had several million other accidents with cars. You don't need to be an imbecile to have an accident. Objects controlled by humans moving at a high rate of speed turn out to be dangerous, and great care is required. How much karma do I have to waste explaining such a simple idea to people? I'm done.
    - 193120910 10y ago
      You absolutely need to be a) an imbecile or b) deliberately reckless to cause a car accident. Driving is really quite simple.
    - 10y ago
chrisseaton 10y ago
> a little bit off to me I can't even work out if you think it's too high or too low. You say that the woman was knocked unconscious with lots of exclamation marks as if you think that's really serious, but then you say he could have injured her badly, as if you think being knocked unconscious isn't a bad injury.
- neaden 10y ago
  >but then you say he could have injured her badly, as if you think being knocked unconscious isn't a bad injury. I blame TV and Movies for this, we see people get knocked unconscious all the time and it's always treated as this minor thing, like we just have an off button that takes a good hard knock. In real life of course, any blow that knocks you unconscious has a very real risk of killing you.

twiss 10y ago

This case seems similar to me to, for example, a flower pot falling off a balcony [1]. Does anyone know what the sentence would be for something like that? [1]: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/woman-fights-for-life-after-paddington-pub-flower-pot-falls-on-her-head-6525094.html http://www.standard.co.uk/news/woman-fights-for-life-after-p...

rubidium 10y ago
There's a difference between accidents and recklessness (similar situations arise in driving). This was charged as reckless. The flower pot is different in that regard.
- Confusion 10y ago
  In general? I would expect that if you e.g. put a free-standing flower pot on the edge of your balcony fence, it would still be considered reckless.
  - masklinn 10y ago
    I would expect that as well, and if you throw a flower pot back and forth between two balconies.
  - squarefoot 10y ago
    The problem here is IMO the search for someone responsible to punish at any cost. I'm not saying the guy shouldn't be punished, but like the flower pot example... what if I put a table tennis ball in a similar place and it falls hitting someones nose? The ball is totally innocuous but the surprise makes the poor chap fall and get a fatal injury on the head. Would a court send me to jail for murder?
    - Confusion 10y ago
      Probably not, because you could not reasonably expect the table tennis ball to lead to injury. But if we change it to a basketball ball, I would again expect you would be punished, though not with jailtime. And of course things depend on the height of balcony, whether the accused seems regretful or thinks he did nothing wrong, etc. And being held responsible for the medical costs is probably enough of a punishment.

foxhop 10y ago

I feel the same about cars as I do about drones in that they are very dangerous. The car industry had a history of blaming the victim as a "jay-walker" and even lobbying for laws against them. In another universe we have a name for somebody that gets in the way of a drone, and the victim is punished for not wearing a helmet.

peterclary 10y ago
Indeed. http://www.citylab.com/commute/2012/04/invention-jaywalking/1837/ http://www.citylab.com/commute/2012/04/invention-jaywalking/...
jasonkostempski 10y ago
Whats the name for someone thats walks across subway tracks? I don't think the car industry is to blame, it's the city planner that put streets right next to sidewalks with no physical barriers and now also puts bike paths weaving throughout the streets and sidewalks.
- scarecrowbob 10y ago
  This breaks down, because there have been plenty of uses for streets without cars, but there aren't a lot of uses for tracks without railcars. If you understand that the streets and roads have always been used for many kinds of traffic, and that limiting these areas to automobile traffic was not initially considered the only natural response to the advent of cars, the OP's point makes more sense.
closeparen 10y ago
Yeah, we took some minor capabilities away from pedestrians: 1) Ability to enter the roadway at any time, rather than after checking that it's clear. 2) Ability to walk down the middle of the roadway instead of the sidewalk. And in exchange, we vastly expanded the amount of commutable land per travel minute, resulting in more space for most people. Also affordable inter-city travel and the National Parks. I'd do it again. Just as suburbia is seen by some contemporary progressives as a great social evil, the crowded conditions of urban tenements were the great problem of our time to progressive visionaries back then [0]. Walking as a primary form of transportation, and the extreme density it required of the working class, was not a scalable, long-term, or humane solution. We should have leaned into streetcars instead of personal cars in order to spread out, sure, but then it'd just be some other kind of vehicle making the streets dangerous for pedestrians. No great social problem is solved by drones being welcome at low altitude over crowds. News and public safety organizations already knows how to use real helicopters in that context. There isn't some latent use case for aerial photography that we're all suffering without, it's a nice-to-have, and the decision that it isn't worth the tradeoffs is much more clear-cut. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State_Tenement_House_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State_Tenement_House_...

zach417 10y ago

I assume it's easier to think this kind of sentence is okay when you don't own a drone nor want to own one; it's why taxing cigarettes is the go-to funding tool for increases in education spending. I don't smoke, so who cares? So, I'm assuming this is why the judge and attorney were so aggressive with the sentencing, but 30 days in jail is beyond the realm of reasonableness. I'm all for having the defendant pay restitution, but jail does no one any amount of good.

rlpb 10y ago
I can't speak for the US, but in the UK it is illegal for a pilot of a manned aircraft to overfly a crowd below the height above which gliding clear is possible after an engine failure. In any case, the pilot needs a license to fly the aircraft at all, and getting one needs extensive training and demonstration of competence. Helicopters are "aircraft". Exceptions exist for medevac and police. This rule comes from a consideration of crowd safety. I'm not suggesting that exactly the same rigor must be applied so drones. After all they're smaller and likely to kill far fewer people after an accident involving a crowd. However, I think 30 days is entirely appropriate for someone who was reckless with people's lives under the circumstances. This assumes he was reckless; the article doesn't say if the court decided that.
- pc86 10y ago
  Flight student here - the US is 500' above "non-congested areas" and 1000' above "congested areas," however neither are strictly defined. As my instructor put it, "if you could land on someone's head, consider it congested." The except is air shows, where there is no minimum, and some special use areas such as Military Operations Areas. If you're operating a drone for commercial purposes you need a Private Pilot's License and UAS (Unmanned Aircraft Systems) certificate. This guy owns an aerial photography company but it's not clear if the drone use was hobbyist in nature or if he was getting footage of the event for commercial purposes. Regardless, if he's found criminally liable due to how he operated the drone, it's almost a certainty that the FAA will be coming after every license he has.
- dragonwriter 10y ago

yabatopia 10y ago

Why is it relevant that it happened on a Pride Parade, as the headline suggest? "Pilot of drone that struck woman at parade gets 30 days in jail" is perfectly fine. Now the current headline suggests it could have been a hate crime (it's not), or that a pride parade is something particular (it's not). It's like "Black man robs woman" instead of "Man robs woman": a little bit too specific and suggestive.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> Why is it relevant that it happened on a Pride Parade, as the headline suggest? Because people familiar with the initial incident will more readily connect this story of the legal outcome with the incident with that context. The story isn't just a standalone item, it's part of a series of articles stretching back to the initial incident. [0] [0] You can follow the whole thing back with hyperlinks from the latest article to each previous story, back to: http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/woman-knocked-unconscious-by-falling-drone-during-seattles-pride-parade/ http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/woman-knocked...