Drones Are the New Threat to Airline Safety
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Having said that, I don't know if these are the drones that pilots are spotting. They're the most common enthusiast drone (~$500-$1k), though I'm sure they're outnumbered by the junk toy variety.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/02/08/faa-drone-regi...
So the total market value of all drones posing significant risk to aircraft is probably on the order of $50M. If one of these were to accidentally down an airliner of 100 people, that would be $1B of damage, using the ~$10M statistical value of human life in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life
So even if you think it is generally bad to impose strong regulations based on merely hypothetical risks, this might be a place where it makes sense.
> Current FAA rules restrict drone operators from flying within five miles of an airport and above 400 feet
The issue is either a lack of awareness of the regulations, or, perhaps a willingness to flout the regulations.
Many people people think little of driving 10-15mph above the speed limit, and will only slow down when speed-cameras are installed and visible. Perhaps the answer is visible publicised enforcement.
Frankly, this is why most car accidents happen. Drivers thinking the rules don't apply to them.
I'm all for much stricter enforcement of traffic laws, even if the speed limit is "lowered by environmentalists" (they kind of have a point here though; also probably the only rule drivers blatantly ignore more often than speed limits is safe driving distance). We can have a discussion about adjusting the laws, but first people need to actually obey them. Otherwise it's not civilization, it's a jungle.
I'm 29, above average intelligence, strong visual-spatial, never been in an accident. The rules don't apply to me. ;) This country doesn't have "discussions" anymore, there's no incentive for a politician to increase the speed limit or get rid of mandatory minimums. So fuck it.
Let me know if you ever visit Seattle, it'd be cool to run into you!
Haha :). Well, glad to hear that, and I hope you won't have to be in (or witness) an accident ever.
> This country doesn't have "discussions" anymore, there's no incentive for a politician to increase the speed limit or get rid of mandatory minimums.
Yeah, mine neither. I think it's a global phenomenon in the West now.
> So fuck it.
I still want to believe there's a better way...
> Let me know if you ever visit Seattle, it'd be cool to run into you!
Why thank you :). The same if you happen to visit Poland (especially the southern areas)!
I think there's a lot of potential in self-driving cars to identify bad drivers. When you have thousands of cars using LiDAR to accurately track the movements (and crashes) of human-driven cars, we'll gain a better understanding of what makes an unsafe driver, and we'll be able to identify incidents that were _almost_ a crash. With more LiDAR-recording cars on the road, insurance companies could ask Google to send them examples of bad driving for all their insurees.
So, one day, I might get a higher bill from State Farm because hey, they have evidence of me being an unsafe driver. If it's backed by data, then I'm in favor of it.
Haha! I'll absolutely reach out if I visit southern Poland. But I was making a pun--- "run into" is also used in american english to describe a car crashing into something. i.e. "I ran into a stop sign."
> Haha! I'll absolutely reach out if I visit southern Poland. But I was making a pun--- "run into" is also used in american english to describe a car crashing into something. i.e. "I ran into a stop sign."
I suspected you might have been doing it, but decided to assume the non-pun interpretation was also true :).
The primary surveillance radars at airports are unlikely to detect an object as small as these, they just don't reflect enough and I suspect even if observed they would be ignored by software because of their small size and low speeds (basically, they do not look or act like airplanes).
The secondary surveillance radar, which is now the main system used by ATC, would be completely blind to them, as it relies on active equipment being installed in the aircraft. Requiring the installation of transponders in drones might be tempting, but they are large and expensive compared to a quadcopter, so it's impractical.
This feels like the sort of limitation that will disappear given a few more years of electronic miniaturization. Drones aren't going away, so it would be wise to start work on incorporating them into ATC systems sooner rather than later.
Interesting factoid: The new regulations put into place last year by the South African civil aviation authority mandates transponders for drones entering restricted/controlled airspace.
Apparently, there are commercial transponders in place that comply with the specs required, but are prohibitively expensive. At least, compared to most consumer drones.
1. There is evidence that drones exist.
2. The reports are being made by qualified recognised professionals, who are, at the time of reporting, clearly in good health, good state of mind, and sober (or they would not be in command of an aircraft).
3. The reports are sometimes made in real-time (pilots reporting to ATC over radio whilst on approach), or very shortly after the incident.
4. The reports are detailed (in some cases even describing the colour of the drone).
5. The incidents are backed up by secondary reports: e.g. drones being reported around an airport without necessarily causing an airprox incident.
All that said, perhaps better data would help document the degree of risk. The drones that are directly radio-controlled (rather than having a programmed flight-plan) will usually operate on a small set of standard frequencies, which could be monitored and recorded. Add some video surveillance, and this could add more documentary evidence to the reports.
> mysterious objects in the sky that never quite manage to show up on photos or radar
You are quite right to refer to UFO reports that came from highly qualified pilots, etc. Those were reports made by highly trained professionals, with lots of detail, etc.
I would counter that by saying that pilots in that era were encouraged to report any strange/unidentified experience. So they genuinely reported anything that could add weight - either for or against - such as lightning strikes, odd cloud formations, odd solar events, etc.
And those UFO sightings were specifically things that, despite all the detail, were, by definition, not identifiable. And given the description of most of the objects, they would have expected them to show up on radar (given the described size, and the understanding of radar at the time…it's quite possible that a combination of new stealth technology and the era's radar limitations obscured this possibility).
The main difference is that all of those phenomenon were unidentified: the pilots never had sufficient detail to match their evidence to a real-world experience.
I'm sure that during that era there were also all sorts of airprox events that were recorded, but didn't necessarily have all that much follow-up since, simply because the circumstances were clear and identifiable.
In these drone reports, the pilots have clearly and succinctly identified the issue.
It's one thing to report vague lights, and suggest it may be a UFO (because there's nothing to identify what Flying Object might be causing the lights); it's a very different case to very accurately describe a drone, report it as a drone, and have strong correlation with other reports of drone flights near that airfield.
I really wouldn't give too much credence to the lack of photos or radar.
As mentioned before, the dimensions of most drones preclude detection on most radar (not that they can't be detected, but that most radar systems will filter them out as noise), and the fact that almost all commercial jets don't have a set of dashboard cams, that gives enough reason to understand why there isn't an overwhelming wealth of evidence for drone airprox events.
There were no real-world experiences of UFOs, but it's not correct to say that pilots didn't know what to expect -- flying saucers with a very specific description were a well-established part of popular culture. A saucer-shaped object at a great distance that moved quickly, made sharp turns which would be impossible for a fixed-wing aircraft, and which would eventually disappear as if it had moved straight away at high speed, was the standard description. It would have been in the mind of any pilot, and indeed exactly that description popped up innumerable times in the UFO reports.
a)The consumer drone industry is already adopting no-fly zones (some in firmware) and the FAA has moved quicker to regulate this technology than any other technology before. This is being squashed before it became a problem. I wish the government did the same for other "dangerous" technology (guns anyone?).
b) Putting "drones" in a news article is the click-baitiest clickbait. There hasn't been actually any substantial news/incidents around drones that had to be covered on a national level, other than the reactionary regulations. Let's just admit to that.