It's frustrating that when something like this happens, people tend to blame the drone, not the pilot. When someone gets drunk and crashes their car, nobody blames the car.
I hope they find this guy and make an example of him.
These are arguments for restrictions, not against them
I imagine the answer is, the legal owner of the device gets in trouble, and then the owner sues the manufacturer. The only problem comes when those happen to be the same entity. Renting/licensing autonomous drones that are flown-by-wire from the manufacturer's data-centre could make things much messier.
Pretty sure it only covers you at AMA-designated sites, though, so might not help much for this use-case. That said, I'd never think to fly my relatively-small 450-class electric heli over a crowd. Then again, people would likely run screaming if I did, since they're much less tame/stable than quads, and pulling lots of pitch definitely creates the "blade thump" which you can feel in your chest even at this size (325mm blades, so ~30" blade disc).
However, students are by and large willing to put up with this side effect in order for the commons to still be a place to recreate.
Precautions - for all sorts of flying things - is reasonable. And failing to take them is negligent and rightly bestows liability. But drones introduce nothing new in this respect.
The post you responded to suggested restrictions [0]. Not bans.
I said hit, along with thrown. Amusingly your video starts with a football being thrown. And most of these videos (haven't watched them all) are at sporting events or fields. The first ones are people standing on the sidelines of a football field not paying attention to the ball being thrown. It sucks they got hit, but that's not a spot to stand in and assume you'll be safe when the game or practice is going on. Most of the others seem to be spectators at games. They're in an area where they know this is a risk. That's the difference compared to drones flying over crowds. If the crowds don't realize it's overhead or expect it to be overhead that they can't even prepare for it to fall on them.
EDIT: [0] However, it's my understanding that most of these incidents involving drones fall under the same rules/laws that already exist for model aircraft. I haven't researched this, just trusting my model airplane operating friends. So restrictions are probably already in place that should (if enforced or operators are responsible) reduce the risk to all involved. The problem is that, unlike model airplane operators, many of these new wave of operators are coming into on their own without the benefit of mentorship from the broader community to guide them.
EDIT: https://www.faa.gov/uas/model_aircraft/
Rules are already in place. That it's a copter or popularly viewed as a drone and not a model aircraft doesn't really change things. Hobbyists shouldn't be operating these around crowds. It's reckless.
When I was growing up, the hobby shops in town wouldn't sell you a plane, copter, or kit for the same without verifying that you were an AMA member. [1] They understood that planes and copters can be quite dangerous in untrained hands.
[0] http://www.modelaircraft.org/
[1] Not because they were required to, mind, but because it was a sound idea.
This is probably why we need "unnecessary" laws.
People like yourself think you're entitled to put others at risk. Common sense isn't sufficient.
And, while apparently this case was a hit and run that's not special for drones. People crash their cars into things all the time and run even though they're supposed to have both a driver's license and car registration. People also throw balls (or rocks), break windows, and don't fess up. Doesn't seem like new laws are needed
Am I missing how it's different? Drones might be new but there's been RC planes and gliders for decades. Did those need special laws for crashing them or do we just use the same laws we use for bodily harm and/or property destruction?
I guess there might be a bit of a knowledge gap on the regulation end, let's hope that quadcopters and the like don't get too stifled because of this.
Flying things are dangerous. You don't just 'blame the pilot' and have all small aircraft unregulated, you strictly regulate who can fly them, the training they receive, and how they act – deviations from the rules involve severe consequences.
A drone doesn't have to be very big at all to impart serious permanent damage, promises of punishment for idiots isn't enough. We will very soon get to a point that selling to an unlicensed person will result in the seller accepting all liability for the buyer's actions. That will be the _only_ way to properly regulate drone usage. Otherwise, people are going to die... they probably will before the right regulations are in place.
Let's look at laser pointers--a good example since those with the strength to affect aircraft became commercially viable in the early-mid 2000's. They're affordable, and have a similar enthusiast following... and yet the incidences of lasers being pointed at aircraft per anum is surprisingly low, seeing as almost everyone gets caught, and the punishments are severe.
Trying to regulate technology in the manner you suggest would just incite people like me to be more interested in building and producing that which is unreasonably restricted--affecting public perception is far more reliable in terms of generalized safety from idiots and reckless negligence.
Though licensing and thoroughly restricting using drones in any spaces besides your own property (which is sufficiently removed from others' property) is still a necessity and inevitable.
The fact that it was a drone shouldn't have changed anything.
"So I see you've got both duct-tape and bandaids holding this on; yeah, this is just a tragic accident."
flying quads above people is big no-no. they can loose control for many different reasons.
As I tell my 4-year-old all the time, sure, the crash itself was an accident, but the pilot's behavior before and after the accident was not.
I agree that the guy is at fault here, one way or another.
I used to think the argument of 'guns don't kill people, people kill people' was utterly ridiculous, but I have to say the OPs argument sounded totally valid to me. It goes to show how your own biases can work against you when it comes to reasoning about arguments.
But as the irrational human I am, I still am for much stronger gun control, and maybe a little more regulation on drones - to quote the immortal Eddie Izzard:
'Guns don't kill people, people kill people - but I think having the gun helps.'
> people tend to blame the drone, not the pilot.
I don't pay that much attention to drones, and to me this seems to be part of what drones are made for. Many of the popular drone videos I've seen were in situations where it could conceivably fall on someone.
I think a good model would be the way radio is regulated.
In radio, there are consumer hand held transceivers that require no license on the part of the consumer. If you are, say, going camping and want radios for communications among your party, you can just go down to Walmart and pick up a set of these radios, and you are all set.
The manufacturers of these radios are regulated. The radios have to limit themselves to certain frequencies and power levels, and have to be certified by an FCC approved testing to meet all the FCC technical requirements.
These radios are all fairly low power, and operate on frequencies that usually are limited to dozens of miles range, so there aren't many ways that someone misusing these radios is going to cause much trouble.
For people who want to operate on frequencies that can propagate hundreds or thousands of miles, or who want to use high power, or who want to be radio technical geeks and hack their hardware or even build their own transmitters or RF amplifiers (note that all of these are activities where it is easy to cause trouble if you mess up), they can do that if they get an amateur radio license.
This is not a huge barrier. The entry level license (the technician class license) allows all the things I mentioned above, except it only allows limited access to the long distance frequencies, is pretty easy to get. The general class license, which opens up frequencies in all the amateur frequency bands, is a bit more difficult but still not too bad. (There's one more, the extra class license, that is a fair bit harder to get, but it doesn't open up any new capabilities--it just makes some more bandwidth available in some of the bands, and allows for callsign formats that are not available the other license classes).
Then there are various commercial licenses that become relevant for people setting up professional radio systems for business or industrial use. These are the kind of system that you aren't just going to decide you want and go out and buy. We're talking things where you are going to get radio pros to design your system, deal with getting the licenses you need, and setting things up.
An analogous scheme for drones could work something like this:
1. Simple drones that have limited range and altitude (probably enforced by software on the drone) and weight and carrying capacity can be bought and operated by anybody. For the average consumer who is looking for a fun toy to fly around their property, and occasionally use for something productive like checking to see if it is time to clean the gutters or finding out where the hell their frisbee went, this would be all they need. It would not be legal to modify these drones.
2. If you want to carry heavier loads, or go higher, or farther, or hack your drone's hardware or software (or build your own drones), you'd have to get an amateur drone license. These would be similar to amateur radio licenses in that they would not be too difficult to obtain--mostly they just ensure you are somewhat aware of the legalities of operating a drone and what you must do to operate responsibly.
3. If you want to operate commercially, or build or hack drones for others, or operate at long range or very high, you'd have to get a more comprehensive license.
This is actually not true at all. Read newspaper headlines about car accidents; they're often in the form "Man killed by car", not "Man killed by another man". Even the NYT falls victim to this error.
Because I'm pretty sure I've never seen a headline that said "Man killed by car".
Maybe, "Man killed by drunk driver"...
So if a headline said "Man killed by falling rock", you assumption is that people blame the rock?