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Finland Announces an Anti-Laser Campaign For Air Traffic

Posted by samzenpus on from the stop-pointing dept.

jones_supa writes Trafi, the Finnish Pilots' Association, and STUK, the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority, have launched a joint campaign against air traffic interference with the title "Lasers Are Not Toys." Ilkka Kaakinen from Trafi says that laser pointers interfering with air traffic is a real problem in Finland. "We receive reports of several cases of laser interference every month and every one of them is potentially dangerous," Kaakinen says. Last year, 60 cases of laser pointer interference were reported in Finland, and the figure for this year was at 58 in November. Despite the continuing interference, only one person has been caught misusing a laser pointer in this way in Finland. That single person was not convicted of a crime, as the court was not able to establish intent. Kaakinen says other countries hand down severe punishments for interfering with air traffic, even years-long stretches in prison. He also reminds that it is important for users of laser pointers to understand that the devices are not toys, and that children should be warned of the potential danger in using them irresponsibly – or ideally, not given one at all.

20 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. Do not give lasers as gifts to children by mbeckman · · Score: 5, Funny

    And when you do let children use a laser you own, make sure you supervise them closely.

    I have a great t-shirt from Meredith Instruments that reads "DANGER! LASER RADIATION! Do not expose beam to remaining eye."

    1. Re:Do not give lasers as gifts to children by tlhIngan · · Score: 2

      And when you do let children use a laser you own, make sure you supervise them closely.

      I have a great t-shirt from Meredith Instruments that reads "DANGER! LASER RADIATION! Do not expose beam to remaining eye."

      Sadly, most of the arrests have been people in the age of majority - perhaps they had the maturity of children, but they aren't children. Plus, given how expensive they are (several hundred bucks), it generally isn't a children's toy.

      As for those claiming that it's not a problem because no one's lost a life yet - really? Aviation already is built upon the blood of many people, some of whom lost their lives over something as stupid as a light bulb.

      And no, it may not be a direct cause, but it may be the last link of a chain of events that leads to an accident. Every mishap has been a chain - if any one of those things were different, it wouldn't have happened. Perhaps the pilot is in bad weather already trying hard to find the runway and then a flash comes across the cockpit. He blinks, it goes away, and he continues, but what he thinks is the runway is a after glow spot (similar to how a flashbulb causes temporary spots) and boom, crashes the airplane into a building along the glidepath.

      And perhaps someone you know is on that plane.

  2. And in retaliation .. by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 4, Funny

    In retaliation, sharks have implemented an anti-aircraft campaign.

    --
    "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
  3. convex lens by jclaer · · Score: 2

    Require lasers sold to the public to have a built-in, slightly-divergent lens. That would improve PowerPoint usage too.

    1. Re:convex lens by mbeckman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That won't work because "the public" includes the many tradespeople and professionals that use lasers for surveying, construction, directional antenna alignment, and cat therapy.

    2. Re:convex lens by Immerman · · Score: 2

      Right. They have a lens to focus the beam into as close to a parallel beam as feasible. jclaer is saying they should be required to have a considerably more divergent beam. How many people have a legitimate use for a laser that can maintain a pencil-sized beam at a couple of miles? There are applications for such a thing, but I doubt most people use the capability as anything other than a dangerous novelty, if at all.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    3. Re:convex lens by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

      How many people have a legitimate use for a laser that can maintain a pencil-sized beam at a couple of miles?

      Fortunately, thanks to the laws of physics, such a laser would have to have an aperture of at least 10 to 20 cm, but probably much more, and thus would be very conspicuous.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    4. Re:convex lens by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

      So could powerful flashlights and astronomical telescopes, considering that you could put them together and use the telescope in reverse.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    5. Re:convex lens by mbeckman · · Score: 2

      But we're all buying from the same places. There is no way to reliably verify that a person is, say, a construction worker. Not without some kind of idiotic heavy-handed government licensing. You want that? Really?

    6. Re:convex lens by beelsebob · · Score: 2

      Are you suggesting that we simply list the professions that are allowed to have a genuine focused laser? If so, what happens when a spargeborgler (some new profession that critically relies on focused lasers) comes along? These laws always take years to get updated, leave horrible loop holes, and leave some people with genuine need out on the cold. If you can't express a general way to separate the groups, and have to revert to listing specifics, you're probably doing it wrong.

  4. Just use filters by d18c7db · · Score: 5, Insightful

    All popular lasers operate at very specific wavelengths. Can they not build a filter in the aircraft window to attenuate the 635nm, 532nm and 445nm wavelengths? Or is that is too expensive, how about the cheap and obvious way, require pilots to wear special laser filter goggles during takeoff/landing. Problem solved?

    1. Re:Just use filters by d18c7db · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I just did a quick search and this is already being looked into. http://www.laserpointersafety....

    2. Re:Just use filters by mbeckman · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Googles won't work, and neither will a filtering windshield. They'll just obscure vision. The wavelengths are all over the spectrum. The only thing that would filter them all is a piece of steel. Tough to land that way.

      Even if you could protect pilots, what about the rest of the public? As with any dangerous product, the answer is not to make the general public armor themselves, but to simply demand responsibility from the product owners. Your idea is like requiring police to wear bullet-proof helmets so that children can have unfettered use of guns.

      As with firearms and drones, people too stupid to use lasers responsibly should not be allowed to use them at all. But also as with guns and drones, the answer is not prohibition. It's education. You should be required to demonstrate safe lasing knowledge before buying, just as you must to buy a handgun most places.

    3. Re:Just use filters by TeknoHog · · Score: 2

      Googles won't work, and neither will a filtering windshield. They'll just obscure vision. The wavelengths are all over the spectrum. The only thing that would filter them all is a piece of steel. Tough to land that way.

      What if you just used steel windshields, along with Googles Earth to find out where you're at? I don't see any problem with

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
  5. A pilot checking in here by EmperorOfCanada · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I am not condoning this behaviour, and as a pilot would be royally pissed (if I wasn't dead) if someone did this while I was flying. But I recently got a bright green laser and love to see just how far I can shoot the beam to hit things. Basically if it is a clear moonless night I can pretty much hit a target out to the horizon. But if I were a bit of a dimwit I could clearly see the temptation to try and hit airplanes in that it would be cool to hit something moving and at that height.

    So while punishing people who do this I certainly hope they take into consideration that most people doing this would not be criminal terrorists so much as criminally stupid. Thus the proper punishment most of the time should be to scare the crap out of them and then ban them from owning a laser pointer for a decade or two. Keep in mind that the goal will be to prevent the dimwits from doing it again; it is generally quite hard to prevent them from being dimwitted and thus identifying the occasional dimwit and training him will be far more effective than trying to somehow reach the dimwits and convince them from doing it trough draconian laws which will largely serve to make the dimwit's lives far worse than they already probably are.

    For instance when flying the reports are that the lasers often are coming from trailer parks vs the nice end of town.

  6. Re:but they ARE toys by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    You do realize that airplane accidents are extremely rare and when happened, they usually are caused by an unique chain of events, where one event alone wouldn't caused the crash. The laser pointers alone may not be enough to cause a plane crash normally, but in a critical moment they may be.

    Even a minor distraction or problem can be fatal:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJnPH5ud2W0

  7. I'm sick of this by Charliemopps · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm sick of this bullshit myth.

    Lasers do not cause Aircraft to crash.

    It's never happened, it never will happen. I can't even focus my pen laser on my cat that's 10 feet away from me for more than a split second. Hitting the windshield of an aircraft that's at least 1000 yards away and traveling at at least 200mph?!?! At worst, you have a 1 in a billion chance of nailing the pilot directly in the retina, so yes, you shouldn't do it because that might annoy him. But it's not going crash the plane even if that happened.

    Now, for all of you that are going to tell me I'm dumb and don't know what I'm talking about... Please provide evidence. Has any plane ever had an accident as a result of a laser? Any? I've heard from some irritated pilots, and I can understand that... I'd be irritated to. But to claim there was any chance of an accident and we need to limit consumer freedom to harmless technology, just so we don't annoy pilots? That's a joke.

    And, I'm willing to offer evidence myself:
    2013 Egyptian protests. Snipers on buildings and in helicopters we targeting opposition leaders. As a result, protesters started buying cheap green laser pointers in the market and using them to highlight Sniper and helicopter positions. Eventually, so many lasers would be focused on passing helicopters they looked like this:
    http://cdn.theatlantic.com/sta...
    and here's a video:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
    This went on every night for months. Dozens of aircraft, thousands of lasers focused on them continually... but not one single crash. None.

    There's absolutely no way these laser pointers could cause a crash... and if they could, the NTSB should immediately require all aircraft to be retrofitted with polarized sheets on the inside of the pilots window. It'd cost a couple of dollars per aircraft and wouldn't infringe on the personal freedoms of the general population.

    1. Re:I'm sick of this by mbeckman · · Score: 3, Informative

      Dear sick: you are dumb and don't know what you're talking about. The risk is not pilot eye damage. It's pilot distraction or temporary blinding during a critical phase of flight. As a helicopter pilot, I can tell you that every phase of flight in a helo is critical, as we typically fly at 500' AGL by law and are constantly looking for obstacles to avoid. A laser that makes me not see and avoid the power lines ahead will kill me just as effectively as if it had been a photon torpedo fired from the USS Enterprise.

      When an airliner is landing, this is also a critical phase of flight. Blinding the pilot then will make it impossible to read instruments, possibly if not probably resulting in the aircraft departing from the glide slope and runway centerline and into a collision with airport surroundings.

      You're right that no aircraft in the US has been shot down yet by a laser, although some pilots have suffered permanent eye damage. This is where the part about you being dumb comes in. See, intelligent people try to be pro-active about foreseeable disasters and take action before anyone, even a dumb person, dies. So we're just looking out for you. Pity you're too dumb to realize that.

    2. Re:I'm sick of this by mbeckman · · Score: 4, Informative

      Dear Sick: if you had bothered to put on your Google goggles you could have easily found instances of pilot eye damage:

      http://abcnews.go.com/News/jet...

  8. Re:but they ARE toys by bws111 · · Score: 2

    I hope you are not claiming that that situation does not lead to crashes.