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I would rather be on a flight, where I know that the pilots dies with me, should they fail in their appointed task of controlling the aircraft strapped to their bodies.

Similarly, if an aircraft suddenly falls from the sky and lands on my head, my death would be a slightly happier affair for my family, so long as they know the person charged with it's stewardship was also killed (or at least injured) by the accident.

Even though a robot, or hybrid system of remote and autonomous flight control might prove to be statistically more reliable, I find it preferable when the burden of having lives hang in the balance is shared equally among all participants, even when the human in control might be feeling drunk and slightly suicidal on some grey Monday morning, perhaps after a recently emerging from a messy, dehumanizing divorce.

Am I alone in feeling oddly reassured by this grim social contract?

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I don't know if you're alone, but you're certainly 180 degrees opposite of how I feel...

That's not really the point of the article though. The article is (mostly) talking about small (a few kg) battery operated machines that even in the hands of a seriously irresponsible operator are unlikely to cause any mass carnage.

Here's my line of thinking: Right now, we're essentially conditioned to the premise that when something is sailing through the air, the general gut instinct for what that UFO might be is usually limited and pretty reliable. There's a certain predictability to mere birds, baseballs, kites, balloons, et c...

When it isn't one of those ordinary things, that certain predictability pretty much goes out the window. I don't find the idea of adding remote control aircraft to my list of normative conditioned responses to flying things particularly appealing.

In my gut, I have an instinct to smash mysterious flying things that I perceive as threatening, regardless of how rational that perception is. When a bug flies too close to me (and especially my ears), my reptilian brain takes over, and demands swift, brutal action. It's that same sort of fear that Hitchcock tapped into with The Birds.

I grew up around farm fields with crop dusters, and those didn't bother me growing up, because I could see the guy inside the bubble dome cockpit, and wave to him, and he'd wave back sometimes, right before dive-bombing potato beetles with insecticide.

But take away the pilot from that equation, and I don't feel the same. The degree of investment from my conscience changes, and the air craft enters a new realm of human perception. It's private property, sure, but it's set in motion with uncertain intent.

When people make sport of these unmanned flying things (and they certainly have: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/18/colorado-town-p...), I understand the sentiment of that stance. It's something mysterious flying over your head, and at a personal level, that taps into some specific emotions that aren't easy to part with.

You are right, take our fellow man out of the equation, and it all feels very different, regardless off the reasons/excuses given.

This is also helps explain why drone attacks (missiles too) to kill terrorists, and so on, are so hated and seen as cowardly. If such people are killed like Bin Laden was, then that feels more acceptable than a drone strike, because in that sort of scenario, there is a man on man thing. There is a sort of honor to it.

I personally very much dislike US incursion in to foreign countries to kill people. However, when OBL was killed, I did think, well at least men on the ground got their hand dirty and took personal risk to do it. Much more honor to that than some drone jockey sitting safely in a bunker thousands of miles away risking nothing what so ever, like a kid playing some console game.

Something else. Many find it more irritating to be caught speeding by a speed camera than a police man in a police car. Similar sort of thing.

Bottom line: electronics, robots and automated system are superior to us, which is why they are used. Very simply, it is not fair. There is no sporting chance for us second rate humans.

"I would rather be on a flight, where I know that the pilots dies with me, should they fail in their appointed task of controlling the aircraft strapped to their bodies.

If the cause of the accident is pilot error, then sure. But what about everyone else who has direct impact on the safety of your flight (i.e. mechanics, air traffic control, etc). They share much of the responsibility for the soundness of your aircraft, but are only restrained by their conscience and possible legal recourse.

Lives aren't meaningfully hanging in the balance when you're talking about a four-pound drone that is being flown only kinda recklessly, and only near volunteers.

Well, how would you feel if your death on a plane crash was actually the responsibility of an Air Traffic Controller on the ground, and not the pilot of your aircraft (who also may or may not have perished)? Seems like you could already be in this situation, as there have been some very serious accidents caused by ATC error.

There's a certain sort of "figure head" status that the pilot may assume, when degrees of control are acquiesced to external factors beyond the capacity for a mortal human's situational awareness. The global awareness of air traffic, and mechanical state is often placed beyond the scope and reach of the pilot's abilities as an individual.

But the decision to step over the threshold and place the airframe in a circumstance of danger rests with the pilot. The pilot possesses the choice and power to throttle up, and take flight. Regardless of prior certainties and ambiguities, a pilot makes the decision, estimates the risk and rolls the dice. The plane is in the air because of the pilot's direct action, even if decisions are made based on proxied information from inspectors or ground control.

The passengers, too, roll the dice by delegating control over their lives to the pilot. They've chosen to accept the implicit risks that the pilot has assessed.

People on the ground also collectively acquiesce to the risk of having planes over head. When we don't agree with the idea, sometimes the only way to settle matters is with anti-aircraft artillery.

So we do have a form of choice regarding whether or not UAVs are permitted over head. How the enforcement of such "authority" and "regulations" takes place might become it's own beast.

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