High-Powered Laser Pointers Pose Risk to Pilots | Hacker News Reader

High-Powered Laser Pointers Pose Risk to Pilots

nytimes.com

24 pointsquizbiz30 comments

Got to see a 1 Watt blue, handheld laser recently. I cannot think of a much more dangerous item for $300. I won't link but it's easy to find online.

If one knows how to use it, the risks can be minimized. But you package something to look like a flashlight and have 1 Watt of 445 nm light coming out of it... that has bad idea written all over it. 10 microseconds of exposure is much greater than the max permissible exposure (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IEC60825_MPE_W_s.png).

100 mW is sufficient for star-gazing purposes. I can't think of any good reason for someone to have a 1 Watt laser on public property. As much as I hate regulation, I think a reasonable law at minimum is the battery cannot be in the laser during transportation over public property. What you do in your own home is up to you and your cornea.

A 1W handheld laser is amazing. I remember back in the early nineties, we got our hands on a, IIRC, 400mW Argon laser. I thought that was powerful, and it was a ~6"x6"x2ft box with a huge fan and a power cord. To have that sort of power in a battery-powered, pocket size package is... well, I'm amazed.

FYI, in Sweden, what's called "Class 4" lasers (>0.5W, basically) are regulated (or at least back in those days they were.) You need a permit to operate one, and you need to implement strict safety arrangements to avoid exposure. (I got a waiver for my 10W home-built CO2 laser, but that's a different story... ;-)

It's still far less dangerous than a gun. The problem is people don't view in that category. "It's just a flashlight" vs "This is dangerous and if I use it improperly I can go to jail for a long time".

PS: When you consider how much damage someone can to with a car I think you will find causing damage for the lulz is not really that common.

A gun runs out of ammunition - with this you can stand on a freeway overpass and silently blind everybody that drives under it.

Just how long do you think you can target someones eyes in a moving car? I am not saying a pilot or driver is not going to notice, but to cause actual harm would be really hard.

At one watt the safe exposure limit is 10micro-secs. That's 0.000010s - I think I can hold it on a car for that long

car != someones eyes in a car. First off the front windshield is going to act as a beam splitter and cut off 1/2 the power or less considering how dirty and scratched up the glass is). Second, safe exposure to the full beam for 0.000011s is not going to cause noticeable short term damage. These things are vary dangerous to friends playing in the backyard, but once you start taking about poeple at a distance in moving cars it really comes down to luck.

PS: At 60mph it takes 370 microseconds seconds to travel 1 cm. If you stuck one of these at the side of a subway tunnel facing the people inside (at eye level) at most you could cause mild short term damage. Trying to nail peoples eyes on cars on the freeway without some sort of tracking system would be really difficult. And obvious that something was happening.

The problem is that the beam propagates so far that, unlike if you want to injure someone with a car or a handgun, you are far removed from the effects of your actions and are much less likely to be identified.

I'd say that in terms of the combination of the range at which you can permanently disable someone, the ability to conceal the device, and the low visibility of "discharge", this is one of the most dangerous things I can think of.

Lasers are really hard to aim at long range. Simple trigonometry means you basically need to set up a computer and a telescope to get anywhere near your target.

If you want to cause damage there are plenty of ways of doing it. An iron bar sitting on a thin layer of electric insulation then sitting on the third rail of a subway will produce a shit ton of casualties once a subway car runs over it.

They're no harder to aim than a gun at the equivalent distance, and you get the added benefit of continuous emission rather than a single shot (and no wind drift or lead).

However, the tech specs for that laser show the "Nominal Ocular Hazard Distance" at which a 0.25s unprotected exposure does not cause lasting effects to be 149m. That's far, but not THAT far. So as long as the subject doesn't stare into the beam (which probably is more likely than you think given the brain's almost compelling instinct to look at sudden movements), you still have to get pretty close. (Unless you fit it with a collimator, of course.)

Bullets are dangerous when they hit a 1m^2 target, 1w lasers are dangerous when they hit a 1cm^2 target. Aiming at a 1m^2 target at 150m is hard, aiming at a 1cm^2 target at 150m is next to impossible.

At 150m, the beam is 1.5m across (the divergence is 1.5mrad). Putting a 1cm^2 target at 150m within a 1.5m beam is not at all hard.

People who do that are absolute psychopaths.

It's not the same, but I came to know a graffiti "artist" up close and personal. No, not the clever, cultural-references and political-stencil type, but the sign-your-name-on-everything fuckwit. Absolute monster! He would look at the nicest part of town and get physical convulsions, just aching to spray his name on it (funnily, his real nickname which is also his myspace handle, in graffiti font) He made absolutely no effort to hide is actions or intentions.

I bet these people flashing lasers are similar idiots who are bragging about it to someone. If not in person, then online. The freaks tend to "think aloud" and can hardly keep it to themselves.

Driving through Gilroy, I had someone light up my car repeatedly from behind with a high power laser. They must've been in another car, heading in the same direction. So, it's not just pilots.

If they'd done it from the front, or got a lucky reflection off of one of my mirrors, there could've been a serious accident.

It's a shame that there are so many people out there who can't act responsibly.

Sounds like there might be a market for installing one way mirrors in people's car windows.

Not going to work. "One way mirrors" aren't -- they're just glass with a partially reflective metallic coating. Turn back 90% of the incident light and you've effectively got a window tinted about as much as a pair of mirrorshades (which isn't going to help with night driving). But the jackasses can just use a more powerful laser for their potentially-lethal lulz. Up the power tenfold and they can deliver the same amount of energy to the driver's eye.

The only really appropriate response is to enforce criminal sanctions against -- people who shine lasers into other peoples' eyes. Assault should cover it; no need for any new legislation. The issue is detection and enforcement.

I wonder if it would be feasible to coat airplane windshields with some sort of narrow-band filter which would block light at the specific frequencies of commercial lasers, but let light at other wavelengths pass.

Probably more feasible to make pilots wear goggles when landing. Though the number of frequencies are increasing, so such goggles may not be easy to make without making them prohibitively dark.

The article is so poorly written as to be distracting. From the non sequitur in the first paragraph to "20 times as powerful than what the law allows". NYT!

Talk about mixed feelings.

As a libertarian I'm completely against the idea of some new set of laws about what I can or can't do with light, for cripes sake.

But as a pilot, and a passenger, hell if we can put up with people attacking airliners in this way.

We've reached a point where each individual has a lot more power over the rest of us simply because of technology and population density. For instance, 100 years ago if you lived in a cave up in the mountains I could care less if you had six tons of dynamite up there with you. Now the kid down the street going to online laser stores with his mom's VISA card is a bigger threat. Some random jackass hurts a bunch of people with tech, then we all collectively punish ourselves in an effort to prevent future random jackasses. It's a feedback loop that doesn't look so healthy for society.

It's interesting that for many decades scientific doomsayers have been saying the Earth cannot support the expected population growth due to lack of ability to grow food, or provide power, or some other problems. But what may actually be the hard-stop in terms of growth isn't actually providing for the people: it's having an increasing number of increasingly powerful individuals living in increasing close proximity to each other. It's as if you found a saloon full of drunken cowboys in the 1800s, locked the doors, then handed them all pistols. If they live through that their reward is that you cut off their dominant hands (to prevent future use of pistols) and then hand out hand-grenades, if they live through that, you cut off their other hand (to prevent future use of hand grenades) and then distribute foot-operated laser weapons, etc. The situation both cannot remain the same and it cannot keep changing the way it is. Fascinating problem.

Damn bastards. I heard its very common at the Dubai airport too.

Presumably a couple of frequencies are favoured by these devices, so can't they kit out the pilots w/ safety goggles for approach? Sure its a band-aid fix, but its a start.

I'd be surprised if some pilots aren't already doing this.

There are only really 2 or 3 wavelengths right now with commercially available >100 mW lasers. However, they also happen to span the visible spectrum (red, blue, green). So you'd need a narrow band filter for each of those wavelengths so as not to block vision entirely. Narrow band filters get expensive fast.

> Narrow band filters get expensive fast.

Way less expensive than a new airplane, though.

Modern flight control computers can land an airplane autonomously. To protect pilots eyes, what about LCD windscreens that black out momentarily if laser light is detected. Same technology that's used in auto-darkening welding masks.

"Modern flight control computers can land an airplane autonomously."

When everything's working correctly, which is by no means always the case.

The goggles better be compatible with the colors used in the instrument panel.

Been meaning to get one of these now that they're only a few hundred dollars. Guess I'll have to do it soon before they're banned...

I hear about this happening all the time, but what amazes me is that people actually get caught. Days and weeks after the incident. If you're thousands of feet in the air, sure you can get a generally vicinity of where it's coming from on the ground...but how then do authorities actually track it down? Presumably the person is long gone...

This was covered years ago in an episode of CSI: Miami, believe it or not (I don't remember too much else of the plot, though - something about an exploding manila envelope, IIRC).

I think what we need is some stylish safety glasses for every day use.

Yesterday some workers were grinding some metal in a busy street. I was just waiting for the shrapnel.

And the ever lasting threat of old ladies with umbrellas with steel rods just in eyes range, got one on my nose some time ago and keeping waaay clear after that.

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