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FAA Goes To the Web To Fight Laser-Pointing
coondoggie writes "The Federal Aviation Administration wants you to go online to help it battle the growing safety problem of people pointing lasers at flying aircraft. The FAA today said it created a new website to make it easier for pilots and the public to report laser incidents and obtain information on the problem which continues to grow by leaps and bounds. This year, pilots reported 2,795 laser events through Oct. 20. Pilots have reported the most laser events in 2011 in Phoenix (96), Philadelphia (95) and Chicago (83). Since it began tracking laser events in 2005 reports rose from nearly 300 to 2,836 in 2010, the FAA said."
Those are reports of people /successfully/ getting the aim right.
The number of morons waving their lasers indiscriminately at planes is much higher.
I had one idiot shine his fucking keychain laser at my face at a fucking bar. The "average person" with a laser pointer is a fucking menace.
While I disagree with Australia's ban on "high power lasers" (i.e., lasers strong enough to be seen at distance), I do see their point.
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BMO
This is something I would never do because, well, it's dumb and there are better things to do.
There are definitely people in the world who can't find better things to do. Pointing lasers at planes is right up there with a long list of stupidity such as throwing bricks at cars from a highway overpass.
But I wonder how much of this is "there is a serious risk we could crash" and how much is "damn kids, we are pilots, FAA we are quite put out, use your quick-and-dirty-no-legislation-needed administrative law powers".
It would depend on the airport, the type of approach, how much human intervention is required in flying the plane, and the conditions. When a laser hits an aircraft it lights up the entire plane due to imperfections in laser design creating a diverging beam. The issue isn't the possibility to blind the pilot (which is next to none), it's that the cockpit would light up like a set of highbeams pointed at you on the highway making it hard if not impossible to see anything outside the window.
If you didn't punch his face in and shit in his mouth, you're the pussy,
Okay, I followed your link (which wasn't really a link, by the way...), and this confused me:
A typical flash from a hand-held laser at 1000 feet lasts about 1/50 of a second. In the FAA simulator studies, the flash used was one second long. The animation above "splits the difference" by using 1/2 second flashes. We feel this is a realistic portrayal of how long a typical exposure might last.
There is a MASSIVE difference between 1/50 of a second and 1 second! And they're going to "split the difference"!!?
It seems to me like saying, "We're going to simulate eating rice to determine if it could be dangerous. An average serving is around 200 grains, so our simulator uses 3000 grains. Let's split the difference and test 1600 grains. Yup, looks like rice is pretty dangerous!" Well, YEAH, if you're eating eight servings in each sitting!
Not that I'm saying lasers don't pose some danger, mind you. Maybe they do, but this just doesn't seem like a very good-faith demonstration of that. I don't understand why they don't just record some of these actual flashes and show them to the public so that we'll actually see what the problem is. The fact that they don't kind of leads me to think that under just the right, extremely rare and fluky, circumstances it could cause an issue; but really, the danger is probably exaggerated to scare people into not doing it. Such is the problem with these warnings, it's hard to tell where it is in the spectrum (no pun intended) of warnings against stuff like texting and driving (very real and very dangerous) and stuff like using cell phones at gas stations (totally bogus).
But why should someone be responsible for their own safety when they can just demand the government ban things? It's so much easier!
Liberty in your lifetime