All legislation tends to be reactive rather than proactive. The drone industry, in my opinion, has been rather irresponsible about educating their customers. As a result you have people flying drones in places, at times and altitudes they should not.
A few years ago, where I live, we had a rash of new drone owners doing stupid crap like flying over homes, roads, highways, parks and supermarket parking lots, to name a few. This culminated with the inevitable. Someone got hurt, badly, when a drone fell out of the sky. The drone owner/operator got arrested. They ended-up in jail and lost their home in the lawsuit that followed. Pretty f-ing stupid behavior if you ask me.
As someone who has been designing, building and flying all kinds of remote controlled aircraft for somewhere around 35 years, I have been looking at what the consumer side of the drone industry has been doing with horror. I have crashed so many aircraft and helicopters I can't even list them. I am not talking about cheap toys either. My highest cost crash was $6,000 in one day.
The point is these things are toys made with toy-grade electronics. They are nowhere near reliable enough to dare fly over structures, people or roads unless the pilot is willing to face the consequences of killing one or more people and possibly burning down an entire neighborhood. Having done extensive work in aerospace I know full-well what proper fault-tolerant design looks like --cause I have many fault-tolerant designs under my belt. These things are not even close to being safe enough to fly over a crowd of kids at the park or above a neighborhood. And yet it happens all the time.
The industry has had an opportunity to address these issues, either technologically, through education or both. And they have note. Therefore, they are slowly being constrained through precisely the legislation they deserve to have to face.
One of the things I said years ago as drones started to become popular and people started to do stupid things with them was that "these people are going to ruin the model aircraft hobby for everyone". I am sad to say I was right. They are doing precisely that and more.
Not sure if there are any solutions at this point other than the kind of legislation responsible drone owners do not need and do not want.
Oddly enough this is precisely the same situation we have in the US with the firearm issue. Responsible firearm owners don't need legislation to be, well, responsible law-abiding citizens who harm nobody. Those who are in a range between careless and demented are the one's who ruin it for everyone else. This is now happening to drones. Same thing. Different hardware.
100% agree that regulation was the inevitable conclusion of the whole drone craze.
But what baffles me is the type of regulation they're proposing. The bad actor was appropriately found and punished in your story. My thought is, instead of more onerous requirements on end users surrounding registration, why not require the drones to meet some minimum technical requirement regarding capability? The problem doesn't seem to be in finding the person responsible, so why focus the legislation there, instead of trying to make the hobby safer overall?
Unless they think it's easier just to discourage people from the RC hobby altogether, which is what the current proposal would do.
Well, in the local case someone told the cops who was flying it (from the comfort of their backyard, BTW). In most cases it likely is very difficult to identify the pilot. Worst yet, you might never see the drone while they create great potential danger (flying over a freeway) or invade privacy (fly above someone's property or look into a home).
I am not for a minute proposing bans or anything like that. Yet the current framework and industry do not impose any level of responsibility on owners.
For example, I carry a one million dollar insurance policy to cover any damage I might cause with my model airplanes, helicopters or drones. However, the policy is only valid if I fly within a set of rules. Not surprisingly, I am not allowed to fly over people, homes or roads. Which means I tend to be extremely safety-conscious and never fly in any way that would endanger others or their property.
That is absolutely lacking in the consumer drone industry. People think nothing of flying their drones over anything or anyone and they don't even have insurance to cover the damage they might cause.
As a simple example, my solar array cost in the order of $50K. If some idiot crashes a drone into it it'll cost me thousands of dollars to fix it. It might even start a massive fire. And yet, unless you see who's flying the thing, they confess or someone identifies them, they will never be caught. When people do not suffer consequences for their actions they have no reason to behave with civility or consideration. Most people are good, but most people can be real idiots as well.
> They are nowhere near reliable enough to dare fly over structures, people or roads unless the pilot is willing to face the consequences of killing one or more people and possibly burning down an entire neighborhood.
If your entire neighborhood can be burned down by one consumer-level drone, you've got bigger issues.
Kids hit baseballs near crowds, with similar kinetic potential and the occasional injury and even death. We manage to survive as a society without strict regulations on baseball games.
If you think regulations around baseball fences and insurance arent huge, you have never taken part in little leauge, much les a major event. The amount of litigation surrounding baseball is staggering. Your analogy is unfortunatly, more apt tan you meant for it to be.
Second, we are in Southern California, where massive brush fires have taken out entire neighborhoods. This is particularly dangerous during Santa Ana wind conditions, where we can have sustained 30 to 60 mph winds.
If a drone crashes into fuel (brush, a home, etc.) and the LiPo is damaged or shorted you have a very high potential for a large fire. Add wind and more fuel to that and you can easily take out a chunk of a neighborhood if not the entire area.
For context, we had a small fire two blocks away just a few months ago. The hill on the side of the road lit for some reason. It was very windy. Before you knew it three homes --not adjoining-- had gone up, several fences burned and probably about a quarter of a mile of grass/shrubs/fuel burned-up. This was with two Super Scooper aircraft and three or four water-dropping helicopters dumping water and retardant at a furious pace (we live by a lake, so round trips are quick).
And then there are real cases of real homes, garages and businesses going up in flames due to drone or LiPo batteries catching fire:
In other words, no, I am not over-stating the danger of people flying drones around hills, brush, homes or roads. It doesn't matter how small they are, LiPo's are very energetic and can start nasty fires.
This is part of the problem I alluded to in my earlier note. People simply aren't educated about this stuff and actually think it is safe to fly these things anywhere and might even laugh at those proposing this is very dangerous. The industry has failed to educated people, which is why it will get pounded with legislation.
BTW, all of my LiPo batteries are stored in fireproof bags inside a fireproof metal container. My garage might fill with smoke but I am not going to lose my home over a bunch of batteries for my model aircraft.
This is a reality everywhere. California has bigger issues, yes, but that's not to say that a drone crashing into a neighborhood anywhere in the US could not launch a catastrophic event.
BTW, even if the issue was narrowed down to burning down a single home it would be serious enough not to have these things flying above neighborhoods. Let's be sure we are not doing the typical HN thing of getting lost in an endless and pointless minutiae argument --typical of programmers-- where everyone is trying to find the missing "case:" statement in the poster's scenario to show just how smart they are or have their position hold. If you want to find one, you can, that doesn't mean these things are anywhere near fault tolerant or safe to have flying everywhere.
There is no position that can support the idea of someone having fun flying around and taking pictures in exchange for a range of negative outcomes from hurting to killing someone on the ground or causing varying degrees of property damage.
That's what we are talking about:
Taking pictures in exchange for creating public danger.
If you want to find a "case:" where my argument is wrong, feel free. YouTube is full of evidence of the danger posed by these things.
At this point the genie is out of the bottle. As much as I hate heavy government involvement this is likely becoming a case where no other option remains on the table.
This has now become the gun debate with different hardware.
> There is no position that can support the idea of someone having fun flying around and taking pictures in exchange for a range of negative outcomes from hurting to killing someone on the ground or causing varying degrees of property damage.
Again, that argument means I can't play baseball with my kids in the backyard. It's not a standard I'm prepared to just accept on your say-so.
>that argument means I can't play baseball with my kids in the backyard
Not even remotely close to the same thing. If you honestly see these two activities as equivalent it likely explains why you are having trouble understanding my point. That's just human nature. Which, as a lateral thought, is one of the things that scares me about the future of AI. If people can't see fundamentally simple things what erroneous preconceived notions are we going to bake into AI?
Now, if you tell me you want to be able to toss a baseball at 90 miles per hour in your backyard and hit it with a bat with the same force and violence used in a ballpark, no, nobody should do that and if you think it is OK to engage in this behavior I suggest you consider the idea of your neighbor doing this and your own kid being hit in the head with a 100 mph baseball. The only way something like this makes sense is if you have so much land that the ball isn't even likely to leave your property.
Rights and how we choose to behave in a civilized society are a balancing act between what we would like to do, how we would like to be have and how we want others to behave towards us. If you don't want your kid killed in your own backyard by a 100 mph baseball then don't suggest it is your right to fire that baseball from your own backyard in a random direction. You have to care for others as you want them to care for you and yours. It really is that simple.
I don't want to burn down someone else's house or cause them harm. That's why I don't fly my planes, helicopters or drones above other's property. In exchange, I expect people to extend the same consideration towards me and my family.
The same applies to loud music. I respect my neighbors and don't play music loud or late enough to disturb them. I expect the same consideration in return.
None of this is because of laws. This is how you have to behave in a civilized society.
A shorted battery with enough energy to fly something is able to start a fire. If you don't believe me, just short the battery and see what happens.
BTW, about 25 years ago I used to manufacture motor controllers for model airplanes and drones. Back then I bought almost every available motor controller in the market for testing. The final test was to short the output of the motor controller (simulating a potential reality of a crash). Every single controller in the market at the time went up in flames.
In other words, in a crash there's some probability N of one of the M motor controllers on the drone shorting or the motor being prevented from spinning. Without safeguards (which is the case with most consumer products of this class and particularly true of cheap Chinese products) this means nearly 100% of the the energy in the battery will go towards heat generation, potentially culminating with ignition of anything from the battery to the motor and, eventually, any fuel in contact with the same.
BTW, back 25 years ago my motor controllers were differentiated by addressing a number of these safety features, including short circuit protection, stalled motor protection and more. Every single motor controller shipped went through automated testing that included short circuiting the output, stalling a motor and more.
Yes, LiPo's are nasty due to their chemistry, yet, at the end of the day, this is about converting the energy in a battery into heat, inside or outside the battery pack.
A few years ago, where I live, we had a rash of new drone owners doing stupid crap like flying over homes, roads, highways, parks and supermarket parking lots, to name a few. This culminated with the inevitable. Someone got hurt, badly, when a drone fell out of the sky. The drone owner/operator got arrested. They ended-up in jail and lost their home in the lawsuit that followed. Pretty f-ing stupid behavior if you ask me.
As someone who has been designing, building and flying all kinds of remote controlled aircraft for somewhere around 35 years, I have been looking at what the consumer side of the drone industry has been doing with horror. I have crashed so many aircraft and helicopters I can't even list them. I am not talking about cheap toys either. My highest cost crash was $6,000 in one day.
The point is these things are toys made with toy-grade electronics. They are nowhere near reliable enough to dare fly over structures, people or roads unless the pilot is willing to face the consequences of killing one or more people and possibly burning down an entire neighborhood. Having done extensive work in aerospace I know full-well what proper fault-tolerant design looks like --cause I have many fault-tolerant designs under my belt. These things are not even close to being safe enough to fly over a crowd of kids at the park or above a neighborhood. And yet it happens all the time.
The industry has had an opportunity to address these issues, either technologically, through education or both. And they have note. Therefore, they are slowly being constrained through precisely the legislation they deserve to have to face.
One of the things I said years ago as drones started to become popular and people started to do stupid things with them was that "these people are going to ruin the model aircraft hobby for everyone". I am sad to say I was right. They are doing precisely that and more.
Not sure if there are any solutions at this point other than the kind of legislation responsible drone owners do not need and do not want.
Oddly enough this is precisely the same situation we have in the US with the firearm issue. Responsible firearm owners don't need legislation to be, well, responsible law-abiding citizens who harm nobody. Those who are in a range between careless and demented are the one's who ruin it for everyone else. This is now happening to drones. Same thing. Different hardware.