Comment by zobzu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zobzu | Hacker News Reader

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there's no such thing as "UAV community" in this case. the vast majority of stupid flights are made by the general public getting a "drone" in some shop and flying it in "funny locations" such as airports.

These have no idea what they're doing and do not participate to forums/communities/etc thus are difficult to regulate.

Blaming it on the UAV community is actually also being ignorant. The actual community is literally spammed by posts about flying safe/where to fly/etc.

I think that a decent analogy to these drone pilots are laser-pointer owners pointing at airplanes. That's totally retarded, doesn't achieve anything exciting - it only risk other ppl's life with low chance of getting caught. Just like drones attempting to "film" 747's landing and the like.

I agree completely with the laser-pointer analogy, and I think UAV operators who make "stupid flights" will eventually suffer similar federal penalties to the laser operators.

I wouldn't say I "blame" the UAV community at all, because, as you say, there are always outliers who can't/won't be educated.

But since I imagine the UAV forum-readers and would-be professional operators are interested in keeping government oversight out of their industry as much as possible, I'd say it's their responsibility to take action on this matter, much like the EAA and AOPA do with personal aircraft.

> I agree completely with the laser-pointer analogy, and I think UAV operators who make "stupid flights" will eventually suffer similar federal penalties to the laser operators.

Much easier to find the source of a laser pointer than the person flying a drone though. I'm not sure how you can deal with that.

Why don't manufacturers simply provide a manual saying WHERE you can fly? Or a prominent link on the packaging? Instead of spamming "the community".

That seems risky in terms of liability, especially since the rules are probably not very clear yet.

Because it's unclear and it's a moving target and it's a localisation challenge.

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