6 ms·

As someone who has been working with "drones" for the past few years, I am sick to death of these people who do idiotic things like fly over a crowd of people.

As someone who has been working with "drones" for the past few years, I am sick to death of these people who do idiotic things like fly over a crowd of people. It's frustrating that when something like this happens, people tend to blame the drone, not the pilot. When someone gets drunk and crashes their car, nobody blames the car. I hope they find this guy and make an example of him.

rtpg 11y ago
And you need a driver's license to drive a car. You also aren't allowed to be drunk while driving. These are arguments for restrictions, not against them
- Natsu 11y ago
  I don't know that we need 'restrictions' per se, but a 'drone license' sounds pretty reasonable to me, especially if the license fees are going primarily towards some kind of liability insurance.
  - derefr 11y ago
    One of the interesting differences: autonomous drones are already pretty common. Who gets in trouble if you buy something that is essentially an "aerial roomba" to patrol your estate, and then one day it shorts out and falls on someone? I imagine the answer is, the legal owner of the device gets in trouble, and then the owner sues the manufacturer. The only problem comes when those happen to be the same entity. Renting/licensing autonomous drones that are flown-by-wire from the manufacturer's data-centre could make things much messier.
    - seanp2k2 11y ago
      Yep, I'd think it'd be the owner held responsible first. IIRC robotic lawnmowers have been on the market for a few years. I've never heard of an incident off-hand, but I'd be surprised if no one has yet been injured by one, so there's probably a relevant court case out there somewhere. Anyone know how to search for something like that?
  - themartorana 11y ago
    Do any licensing fees states charge go towards bettering the industry? I always think of ridiculous cosmetology licensing fees. Maybe someone can school me, but I doubt they go towards liability insurance.
    - Natsu 11y ago
      Probably not, but there's always a first.
  - seanp2k2 11y ago
    They already have this, it's called AMA, and I'm a member: http://www.modelaircraft.org/membership/membership/overview.aspx http://www.modelaircraft.org/membership/membership/overview.... Pretty sure it only covers you at AMA-designated sites, though, so might not help much for this use-case. That said, I'd never think to fly my relatively-small 450-class electric heli over a crowd. Then again, people would likely run screaming if I did, since they're much less tame/stable than quads, and pulling lots of pitch definitely creates the "blade thump" which you can feel in your chest even at this size (325mm blades, so ~30" blade disc).
- greggman 11y ago
  People get knocked unconscious by baseballs. Should we license those too?
  - Klinky 11y ago
    Is the skill level required to operate a baseball safely near a crowd the same as that of a drone?
  - Jtsummers 11y ago
    Baseballs are not typically hit or thrown in the direction of unsuspecting individuals. If you're walking around a fairground you don't expect a quadcopter to land on your head.
    - jMyles 11y ago
      You expect neither a baseball nor a copter. Either hitting you is offensive.
      - akerl_ 11y ago
        And when throwing baseballs into the air in crowded areas of folks not aware of flying baseballs becomes a frequent occurrence, we can look into ways to resolve that problem. Until then, lets focus on things that appear to be becoming a trend?
        greggman 11y ago
        oh, because drones falling on people is a trend?
        smtddr 11y ago
        This whole drone thing is new and people are flying them around crowds. So actually, yeah, the dangers of drones are a new trendy thing that does need to be looked at.
        11y ago
- fpvracing 11y ago
  Where did I argue against restrictions? I would wholeheartedly welcome restrictions, as long as they are not draconian. But just so you know, there are already restrictions (in most countries) about where and how you can fly a quadcopter. People like this just choose to ignore them.
  - rtpg 11y ago
    Sorry, misread your post. I guess there might be a bit of a knowledge gap on the regulation end, let's hope that quadcopters and the like don't get too stifled because of this.
jrockway 11y ago
> When someone gets drunk and crashes their car, nobody blames the car. This is actually not true at all. Read newspaper headlines about car accidents; they're often in the form "Man killed by car", not "Man killed by another man". Even the NYT falls victim to this error.
- coryl 11y ago
  Did you just totally make up this fact? Because I'm pretty sure I've never seen a headline that said "Man killed by car". Maybe, "Man killed by drunk driver"...
  - benatkin 11y ago
    I wish I could make something up and have it instantly get 83,000 results on google https://www.google.com/search?q=%22man+killed+by+car%22&oq=%22man+killed+by+car%22&aqs=chrome..69i57.3317j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22man+killed+by+car%22&oq=%...
    - refurb 11y ago
      Just because that's what the headline says doesn't mean people were "blaming" the car. So if a headline said "Man killed by falling rock", you assumption is that people blame the rock?
  - Anechoic 11y ago
    Google result from a search of "Man killed by car": http://imgur.com/ngs1Cwb http://imgur.com/ngs1Cwb
nullc 11y ago
Meh. Come on. If it were just a camera on a long fiberglass poll that fell, it wouldn't be blame anyone. It would be a _mistake_, apologies would be said, and assuming nothing grave happened likely nothing would come of it. The fact that it was a drone shouldn't have changed anything.
- pavel_lishin 11y ago
  If a person had operated his camera-on-a-stick unsafely, and it had fallen, I'd wager the operator would be blamed. Sure, it would be a mistake, but a preventable mistake. "So I see you've got both duct-tape and bandaids holding this on; yeah, this is just a tragic accident."
- peeters 11y ago
  Why shouldn't it change anything? Are you saying that flying a drone over a crowd and putting a camera on a pole represent equivalent levels of negligence?
- hippich 11y ago
  quads props spin at 20k-40k speed. it was pure luck that quad crashed into building first, which probably shut it down, before crashing into woman. otherwise she could have very bad cuts too. flying quads above people is big no-no. they can loose control for many different reasons.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- URSpider94 11y ago
  If the person had been waving around said pole camera in a reckless and out-of-control manner over peoples' heads, had crashed it into someone hard enough to knock them unconscious, then run away and left the scene without offering an apology, the outcome would have been the same. As I tell my 4-year-old all the time, sure, the crash itself was an accident, but the pilot's behavior before and after the accident was not.
- a3n 11y ago
  Less energy in a falling selfie-camera than a drone falling from high enough not to get hit by a stick.
bhauer 11y ago
Thought experiment: replace "drone" with "gun" in your theoretical. I'm not saying you're wrong or right, though. I agree that the guy is at fault here, one way or another.
- nekopa 11y ago
  That did make me think. I am all for the increased control of guns, but not so much for the control of drones. I used to think the argument of 'guns don't kill people, people kill people' was utterly ridiculous, but I have to say the OPs argument sounded totally valid to me. It goes to show how your own biases can work against you when it comes to reasoning about arguments. But as the irrational human I am, I still am for much stronger gun control, and maybe a little more regulation on drones - to quote the immortal Eddie Izzard: 'Guns don't kill people, people kill people - but I think having the gun helps.'
  - TallGuyShort 11y ago
    I've been swapping alcohol for guns lately. Thousands die every year in DUI accidents. But it's just accepted that prohibition (in the US, anyway) failed miserably and that it's the drunk driver's fault, not the bartender or the brewery or the beer.
- chrismcb 11y ago
  These two aren't exactly equivalent things. There aren't very many autonomous guns. Guns don't tend to discharge when their batteries are low, nor do they discharge if the operator looks away for a moment. Of course we currently have drone laws, which were probably broken.
benatkin 11y ago
> I am sick to death of these people who do idiotic things like fly over a crowd of people. > people tend to blame the drone, not the pilot. I don't pay that much attention to drones, and to me this seems to be part of what drones are made for. Many of the popular drone videos I've seen were in situations where it could conceivably fall on someone.
colechristensen 11y ago
There is a reason the FAA won't issue rules about drones instead keeping them restricted. Flying things are dangerous. You don't just 'blame the pilot' and have all small aircraft unregulated, you strictly regulate who can fly them, the training they receive, and how they act – deviations from the rules involve severe consequences. A drone doesn't have to be very big at all to impart serious permanent damage, promises of punishment for idiots isn't enough. We will very soon get to a point that selling to an unlicensed person will result in the seller accepting all liability for the buyer's actions. That will be the _only_ way to properly regulate drone usage. Otherwise, people are going to die... they probably will before the right regulations are in place.
- j42 11y ago
  Actually, no. With the high availability of PCB's and the upcoming ubiquity of 3D printers, the reality is that such overreaching restrictions as you propose would do nothing but slightly push the market back toward the realm of hobbyists. Let's look at laser pointers--a good example since those with the strength to affect aircraft became commercially viable in the early-mid 2000's. They're affordable, and have a similar enthusiast following... and yet the incidences of lasers being pointed at aircraft per anum is surprisingly low, seeing as almost everyone gets caught, and the punishments are severe. Trying to regulate technology in the manner you suggest would just incite people like me to be more interested in building and producing that which is unreasonably restricted--affecting public perception is far more reliable in terms of generalized safety from idiots and reckless negligence.
  - colechristensen 11y ago
    People like you aren't the target – if you can really manage to make your own flightworthy drone, you probably implicitly beat any potential requirements which would be tested with the licensing process. This is a parallel to the much reduced requirements if you build your own small aircraft – the ability to do it at all implies a certain level of competence. Though licensing and thoroughly restricting using drones in any spaces besides your own property (which is sufficiently removed from others' property) is still a necessity and inevitable.
tzs 11y ago
Consumer/hobbyist drones are definitely going to get regulated. Drone enthusiasts need to get on top of this and work to ensure that they end up with a good regulatory scheme. I think a good model would be the way radio is regulated. In radio, there are consumer hand held transceivers that require no license on the part of the consumer. If you are, say, going camping and want radios for communications among your party, you can just go down to Walmart and pick up a set of these radios, and you are all set. The manufacturers of these radios are regulated. The radios have to limit themselves to certain frequencies and power levels, and have to be certified by an FCC approved testing to meet all the FCC technical requirements. These radios are all fairly low power, and operate on frequencies that usually are limited to dozens of miles range, so there aren't many ways that someone misusing these radios is going to cause much trouble. For people who want to operate on frequencies that can propagate hundreds or thousands of miles, or who want to use high power, or who want to be radio technical geeks and hack their hardware or even build their own transmitters or RF amplifiers (note that all of these are activities where it is easy to cause trouble if you mess up), they can do that if they get an amateur radio license. This is not a huge barrier. The entry level license (the technician class license) allows all the things I mentioned above, except it only allows limited access to the long distance frequencies, is pretty easy to get. The general class license, which opens up frequencies in all the amateur frequency bands, is a bit more difficult but still not too bad. (There's one more, the extra class license, that is a fair bit harder to get, but it doesn't open up any new capabilities--it just makes some more bandwidth available in some of the bands, and allows for callsign formats that are not available the other license classes). Then there are various commercial licenses that become relevant for people setting up professional radio systems for business or industrial use. These are the kind of system that you aren't just going to decide you want and go out and buy. We're talking things where you are going to get radio pros to design your system, deal with getting the licenses you need, and setting things up. An analogous scheme for drones could work something like this: 1. Simple drones that have limited range and altitude (probably enforced by software on the drone) and weight and carrying capacity can be bought and operated by anybody. For the average consumer who is looking for a fun toy to fly around their property, and occasionally use for something productive like checking to see if it is time to clean the gutters or finding out where the hell their frisbee went, this would be all they need. It would not be legal to modify these drones. 2. If you want to carry heavier loads, or go higher, or farther, or hack your drone's hardware or software (or build your own drones), you'd have to get an amateur drone license. These would be similar to amateur radio licenses in that they would not be too difficult to obtain--mostly they just ensure you are somewhat aware of the legalities of operating a drone and what you must do to operate responsibly. 3. If you want to operate commercially, or build or hack drones for others, or operate at long range or very high, you'd have to get a more comprehensive license.

rtpg 11y ago

And you need a driver's license to drive a car. You also aren't allowed to be drunk while driving. These are arguments for restrictions, not against them

Natsu 11y ago
I don't know that we need 'restrictions' per se, but a 'drone license' sounds pretty reasonable to me, especially if the license fees are going primarily towards some kind of liability insurance.
- derefr 11y ago
  One of the interesting differences: autonomous drones are already pretty common. Who gets in trouble if you buy something that is essentially an "aerial roomba" to patrol your estate, and then one day it shorts out and falls on someone? I imagine the answer is, the legal owner of the device gets in trouble, and then the owner sues the manufacturer. The only problem comes when those happen to be the same entity. Renting/licensing autonomous drones that are flown-by-wire from the manufacturer's data-centre could make things much messier.
  - seanp2k2 11y ago
    Yep, I'd think it'd be the owner held responsible first. IIRC robotic lawnmowers have been on the market for a few years. I've never heard of an incident off-hand, but I'd be surprised if no one has yet been injured by one, so there's probably a relevant court case out there somewhere. Anyone know how to search for something like that?
- themartorana 11y ago
  Do any licensing fees states charge go towards bettering the industry? I always think of ridiculous cosmetology licensing fees. Maybe someone can school me, but I doubt they go towards liability insurance.
  - Natsu 11y ago
    Probably not, but there's always a first.
- seanp2k2 11y ago
  They already have this, it's called AMA, and I'm a member: http://www.modelaircraft.org/membership/membership/overview.aspx http://www.modelaircraft.org/membership/membership/overview.... Pretty sure it only covers you at AMA-designated sites, though, so might not help much for this use-case. That said, I'd never think to fly my relatively-small 450-class electric heli over a crowd. Then again, people would likely run screaming if I did, since they're much less tame/stable than quads, and pulling lots of pitch definitely creates the "blade thump" which you can feel in your chest even at this size (325mm blades, so ~30" blade disc).
greggman 11y ago
People get knocked unconscious by baseballs. Should we license those too?
- Klinky 11y ago
  Is the skill level required to operate a baseball safely near a crowd the same as that of a drone?
- Jtsummers 11y ago
  Baseballs are not typically hit or thrown in the direction of unsuspecting individuals. If you're walking around a fairground you don't expect a quadcopter to land on your head.
  - jMyles 11y ago
    You expect neither a baseball nor a copter. Either hitting you is offensive.
    - akerl_ 11y ago
      And when throwing baseballs into the air in crowded areas of folks not aware of flying baseballs becomes a frequent occurrence, we can look into ways to resolve that problem. Until then, lets focus on things that appear to be becoming a trend?
      - greggman 11y ago
        oh, because drones falling on people is a trend?
        smtddr 11y ago
        This whole drone thing is new and people are flying them around crowds. So actually, yeah, the dangers of drones are a new trendy thing that does need to be looked at.
      - 11y ago
fpvracing 11y ago
Where did I argue against restrictions? I would wholeheartedly welcome restrictions, as long as they are not draconian. But just so you know, there are already restrictions (in most countries) about where and how you can fly a quadcopter. People like this just choose to ignore them.
- rtpg 11y ago
  Sorry, misread your post. I guess there might be a bit of a knowledge gap on the regulation end, let's hope that quadcopters and the like don't get too stifled because of this.

jrockway 11y ago

> When someone gets drunk and crashes their car, nobody blames the car. This is actually not true at all. Read newspaper headlines about car accidents; they're often in the form "Man killed by car", not "Man killed by another man". Even the NYT falls victim to this error.

coryl 11y ago
Did you just totally make up this fact? Because I'm pretty sure I've never seen a headline that said "Man killed by car". Maybe, "Man killed by drunk driver"...
- benatkin 11y ago
  I wish I could make something up and have it instantly get 83,000 results on google https://www.google.com/search?q=%22man+killed+by+car%22&oq=%22man+killed+by+car%22&aqs=chrome..69i57.3317j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22man+killed+by+car%22&oq=%...
  - refurb 11y ago
    Just because that's what the headline says doesn't mean people were "blaming" the car. So if a headline said "Man killed by falling rock", you assumption is that people blame the rock?
- Anechoic 11y ago
  Google result from a search of "Man killed by car": http://imgur.com/ngs1Cwb http://imgur.com/ngs1Cwb

nullc 11y ago

Meh. Come on. If it were just a camera on a long fiberglass poll that fell, it wouldn't be blame anyone. It would be a _mistake_, apologies would be said, and assuming nothing grave happened likely nothing would come of it. The fact that it was a drone shouldn't have changed anything.

pavel_lishin 11y ago
If a person had operated his camera-on-a-stick unsafely, and it had fallen, I'd wager the operator would be blamed. Sure, it would be a mistake, but a preventable mistake. "So I see you've got both duct-tape and bandaids holding this on; yeah, this is just a tragic accident."
peeters 11y ago
Why shouldn't it change anything? Are you saying that flying a drone over a crowd and putting a camera on a pole represent equivalent levels of negligence?
hippich 11y ago
quads props spin at 20k-40k speed. it was pure luck that quad crashed into building first, which probably shut it down, before crashing into woman. otherwise she could have very bad cuts too. flying quads above people is big no-no. they can loose control for many different reasons.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
URSpider94 11y ago
If the person had been waving around said pole camera in a reckless and out-of-control manner over peoples' heads, had crashed it into someone hard enough to knock them unconscious, then run away and left the scene without offering an apology, the outcome would have been the same. As I tell my 4-year-old all the time, sure, the crash itself was an accident, but the pilot's behavior before and after the accident was not.
a3n 11y ago
Less energy in a falling selfie-camera than a drone falling from high enough not to get hit by a stick.

bhauer 11y ago

Thought experiment: replace "drone" with "gun" in your theoretical. I'm not saying you're wrong or right, though. I agree that the guy is at fault here, one way or another.

nekopa 11y ago
That did make me think. I am all for the increased control of guns, but not so much for the control of drones. I used to think the argument of 'guns don't kill people, people kill people' was utterly ridiculous, but I have to say the OPs argument sounded totally valid to me. It goes to show how your own biases can work against you when it comes to reasoning about arguments. But as the irrational human I am, I still am for much stronger gun control, and maybe a little more regulation on drones - to quote the immortal Eddie Izzard: 'Guns don't kill people, people kill people - but I think having the gun helps.'
- TallGuyShort 11y ago
  I've been swapping alcohol for guns lately. Thousands die every year in DUI accidents. But it's just accepted that prohibition (in the US, anyway) failed miserably and that it's the drunk driver's fault, not the bartender or the brewery or the beer.
chrismcb 11y ago
These two aren't exactly equivalent things. There aren't very many autonomous guns. Guns don't tend to discharge when their batteries are low, nor do they discharge if the operator looks away for a moment. Of course we currently have drone laws, which were probably broken.

benatkin 11y ago

> I am sick to death of these people who do idiotic things like fly over a crowd of people. > people tend to blame the drone, not the pilot. I don't pay that much attention to drones, and to me this seems to be part of what drones are made for. Many of the popular drone videos I've seen were in situations where it could conceivably fall on someone.

colechristensen 11y ago

There is a reason the FAA won't issue rules about drones instead keeping them restricted. Flying things are dangerous. You don't just 'blame the pilot' and have all small aircraft unregulated, you strictly regulate who can fly them, the training they receive, and how they act – deviations from the rules involve severe consequences. A drone doesn't have to be very big at all to impart serious permanent damage, promises of punishment for idiots isn't enough. We will very soon get to a point that selling to an unlicensed person will result in the seller accepting all liability for the buyer's actions. That will be the _only_ way to properly regulate drone usage. Otherwise, people are going to die... they probably will before the right regulations are in place.

j42 11y ago
Actually, no. With the high availability of PCB's and the upcoming ubiquity of 3D printers, the reality is that such overreaching restrictions as you propose would do nothing but slightly push the market back toward the realm of hobbyists. Let's look at laser pointers--a good example since those with the strength to affect aircraft became commercially viable in the early-mid 2000's. They're affordable, and have a similar enthusiast following... and yet the incidences of lasers being pointed at aircraft per anum is surprisingly low, seeing as almost everyone gets caught, and the punishments are severe. Trying to regulate technology in the manner you suggest would just incite people like me to be more interested in building and producing that which is unreasonably restricted--affecting public perception is far more reliable in terms of generalized safety from idiots and reckless negligence.
- colechristensen 11y ago
  People like you aren't the target – if you can really manage to make your own flightworthy drone, you probably implicitly beat any potential requirements which would be tested with the licensing process. This is a parallel to the much reduced requirements if you build your own small aircraft – the ability to do it at all implies a certain level of competence. Though licensing and thoroughly restricting using drones in any spaces besides your own property (which is sufficiently removed from others' property) is still a necessity and inevitable.

tzs 11y ago

Consumer/hobbyist drones are definitely going to get regulated. Drone enthusiasts need to get on top of this and work to ensure that they end up with a good regulatory scheme. I think a good model would be the way radio is regulated. In radio, there are consumer hand held transceivers that require no license on the part of the consumer. If you are, say, going camping and want radios for communications among your party, you can just go down to Walmart and pick up a set of these radios, and you are all set. The manufacturers of these radios are regulated. The radios have to limit themselves to certain frequencies and power levels, and have to be certified by an FCC approved testing to meet all the FCC technical requirements. These radios are all fairly low power, and operate on frequencies that usually are limited to dozens of miles range, so there aren't many ways that someone misusing these radios is going to cause much trouble. For people who want to operate on frequencies that can propagate hundreds or thousands of miles, or who want to use high power, or who want to be radio technical geeks and hack their hardware or even build their own transmitters or RF amplifiers (note that all of these are activities where it is easy to cause trouble if you mess up), they can do that if they get an amateur radio license. This is not a huge barrier. The entry level license (the technician class license) allows all the things I mentioned above, except it only allows limited access to the long distance frequencies, is pretty easy to get. The general class license, which opens up frequencies in all the amateur frequency bands, is a bit more difficult but still not too bad. (There's one more, the extra class license, that is a fair bit harder to get, but it doesn't open up any new capabilities--it just makes some more bandwidth available in some of the bands, and allows for callsign formats that are not available the other license classes). Then there are various commercial licenses that become relevant for people setting up professional radio systems for business or industrial use. These are the kind of system that you aren't just going to decide you want and go out and buy. We're talking things where you are going to get radio pros to design your system, deal with getting the licenses you need, and setting things up. An analogous scheme for drones could work something like this: 1. Simple drones that have limited range and altitude (probably enforced by software on the drone) and weight and carrying capacity can be bought and operated by anybody. For the average consumer who is looking for a fun toy to fly around their property, and occasionally use for something productive like checking to see if it is time to clean the gutters or finding out where the hell their frisbee went, this would be all they need. It would not be legal to modify these drones. 2. If you want to carry heavier loads, or go higher, or farther, or hack your drone's hardware or software (or build your own drones), you'd have to get an amateur drone license. These would be similar to amateur radio licenses in that they would not be too difficult to obtain--mostly they just ensure you are somewhat aware of the legalities of operating a drone and what you must do to operate responsibly. 3. If you want to operate commercially, or build or hack drones for others, or operate at long range or very high, you'd have to get a more comprehensive license.