I wouldn't be allowed to murder someone and then hide behind that excuse.
Throw these people in jail until the message gets across that unsafe flying is not tolerated regardless of the aircraft being piloted.
There isn't any law to throw (most of) them in jail under.
The FAA guidelines the operator violated carry civil, not criminal penalties.
Flying model aircraft could conceivably result in Reckless Endangerment or Manslaughter charges. However I doubt that most violations of the FAA guidelines warrant such charges.
And it deeply saddens me to think that it may cost someone's life before anything will change.
People fear drone incidents may possibly harm or kill someone - without any concrete evidence of actual harm.
But threaten the "right to arm bears", and from some corners all hell breaks loose.
How does that work? Why are drones even something that gets discussed in the context of improving personal safety when there's _so_ much other low hanging fruit where real differences could be made?
For instance, the current hysteria surrounds mass shootings. But statistically you're about as likely to get struck by lightning. And in places where guns are restricted, its true they don't have mass shootings as often, but that's only because we are defining the act based on the weapon used. The actual class of the attack-mass murder/assault-continues, but using a different weapon, such as arson or poison gas.
Gun deaths are also lumped together as well, so suicides and self defense are treated the same way as unarmed murder, which also muddies the waters.
So "how it works" is that people are irrational when it comes to fear and risk and their instinct is to "kill" whatever it is that makes them fearful. In the case of drones, no one feels particularly strongly in favor of free range drones (and such a situation ultimately is untenable anyway) so there isn't a lot of push back. In the case of guns, not only do many people have strong, reasoned arguments why guns should not be (more) restricted, but they also possess the same irrationality about fear and risk, thus "all hell breaks loose."
That gun control is such a hot-button political issue is why this is a bad comparison and why even mentioning it looks like an attempt to wreck the discussion.
The current problem is twofold: 1) We need better education of new UAS owners (and articles like this one don't help). 2) We need sane new rules and guidelines that allow drone operators to safely and legally do the sorts of things that are currently not allowed (autonomous operation, FPV flight outside of line-of-sight, and commercial operations)
I think 2) is important because you need buy-in from the community so that they self-police and self-educate. If your rules are asinine and un-informed you will alienate pilots and your enforcing job will be MUCH harder.
I agree the author of the article should also have done his research and helped to spread the word (as should the CHP officer whose only advice was to use "common sense" - which is different for a CHP officer than it is for the common person).
I call bullshit.
If you really had 'close calls' in you area, then across the country/world and all the airports there would have been a drone strike by now.
I can't find any evidence of that.
And even if/when one accidentally strikes, there's no evidence people will die.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/aerial-robots/wh...