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Near Misses Lead To More Consumer Drone Legislation
stowie writes: Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has introduced the Consumer Drone Safety Act that looks to shore up safety features on consumer drones and the federal laws that govern them. This bill has nothing to do with the FAA's proposed rules on small commercial drones, this is all about hobbyist drones. It's looking to regulate the maximum height for flight, the weather and time-of-day conditions for flight, and any areas where flights may be prohibited. If passed, the act would require manufacturers to update existing consumer drones to meet these requirements, potentially through an automatic software update. The bill would require safety features for new consumer drones such as Geo-fencing to govern the altitude and location of flights, collision-avoidance software, and more.
Typical Feinstein.
ive already told the local fbi and police, if i find any of their drones flying near my house i will knock them out of the sky, they arent pulling that big brother shit on me.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
It missed - near - what almost got hit!
Now you know, and that you do, you may finally rest in peace.
Always remember,
An MH370 steward
Can we regulate the usage of stupid "share" buttons on slashdot?
Then use the second amendment to fly the f**ker anywhere you f**king like!
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
>The bill would require safety features for new consumer drones such as Geo-fencing to govern the altitude and location of flights, collision-avoidance software, and more.
Way to suck the fun out of everything, sheesh.
Pilots licenses for drones.
Say good bye to affordable drones for hobbyists. Now all drones will have to have a gps module, an altimeter, a microcontroller, and a microprocessor capable of processing all this, extensive software to handle all of this data, .... .
Instead of safety legislation, lets just hold individuals who misuse drones accountable when they do something stupid.
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What happened to restraint??
I mean, we all become adults to make our own way, but now it seems we look to flawed approaches to introduce parenting into our society, either because we ourselves cannot, or are NOT WILLING..
So we look to our officially elected scapegoats to move the charge forward..
thanks guys..
Jesus some of the comments here are so fucking stupid, read the bill.
The Consumer Drone Safety Act would put in place commonsense safety precautions to minimize the risk of a disastrous mid-air collision or crash to the ground. The bill:
Defines “consumer drones” as civil unmanned aircraft manufactured for commercial distribution and equipped with an automatic stabilization system or a camera for navigation.
This definition does not override Section 336 of the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 and model aircraft flown for recreational purposes would continue to be subject to the safety guidelines of a community-based organization rather than to operational regulations of the FAA.
Directs the FAA to regulate recreational operations of consumer drones outside the programming of a nationwide community-based organization.
These regulations shall include a maximum height for flight, the weather and time-of-day conditions for flight, and any areas or circumstances where flights may be prohibited or limited, such as near airports, in the flight paths of manned aircraft, in urban areas, or over public events where spectators are present.
Directs the FAA to require safety features for newly manufactured consumer drones, such as geo-fencing to govern the altitude and location of flights, collision-avoidance software, precautions for the loss of a communications link, a method for pilots and air traffic control to detect and identify the drone, anti-tampering safeguards, and educational materials to be provided to the consumer.
Requires manufacturers to update existing consumer drones to meet these requirements where feasible, such as through an automatic software update.
Allows the FAA to exempt particular types of consumer drones from any requirement that is technologically infeasible or cost prohibitive if other operational precautions allow that type of drone to be operated safely.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Thereby making drones more autonomous and less remote controlled. Shades of SkyNet aside, who's going to provide the AI for this? How will drones be updated when the flight zones change?
The plan is to make every drone join the internet of things? Given the security issues surrounding IoT, putting that issue into drones will allow them to be hijacked. I doubt every drone manufactured is online: What's the legal status of existing drones?
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This is why the Flight Controller I use is Open Source. Control mongers like Diane Feinstein have no say in the software. This is the same lady pushing for back doored encryption. There is nothing in the interest of citizens that runs through her veins. One day she will attack open source as an enemy of the state.
>"Near Misses Lead To More Consumer Drone Legislation"
They are not "near misses" they are "near hits". Near misses means something hit but nearly missed hitting. I don't understand why this is side widely misunderstood. I suppose "just missed" or "just misses" would be an appropriate alternative if one simply must use the word "miss" in the phrase.
Here's a novel idea. How about instead of creating laws for drone manufacturers to try and protect everyone from stupid people how about we create laws to deal with the stupid people. Here's how it works, clean slate everyone can buy a drone if they wish. Once someone does something stupid like fly your drone too close to planes/helicopters, of fly your drone in a crowded area and so forth then that person has their drone taken away, they are charged accordingly and are put on a permanent banned list and never allowed to buy another drone again. Even better let's make a stupid people list so we can stop or help stupid people from continuing to make stupid decisions.
Umm, so why does Dice think we need a "share" button in place of a simple link to read the articles and comments? I realize I can click on the title of the article, and I found out while hovering the mouse cursor that I can click on the little comment bubble. But neither of those actions is obvious or discoverable. Please bring back the "read more" link! Come on guys. Thought you'd learned your lesson with the beta site fiasco. For a while I thought slashdot had leveled out, but now it's going downhill again.
It's a near hit, not a near miss.
If Feinstein was in charge of the Internet, we would all still be using dialup. Shes a regulation nut job extremist. Let them work on real issues instead of creating new laws. Also, I'm sure that watching the police would be first to go. Those police cam videos, the cops already delete them to CYA.
I'd like Diane Feinstein to be geo-fenced to keep her grubby little NSA-sucking
encryption-hating lying hands off of issues that are over her altitude or too far
for her eyesight to comprehend.
Geo-fencing for worthless corrupt senators. Now there's an answer.
Leave the drones alone. They are innocent of any wrongdoing.
E
So only multirotors are in the sights. What about Fixed Wing [airplanes/jets/etc], they can do pretty much the exact same thing as Multirotors [I REFUSE to call MRs Drones as drone kill people, no multirotor has so far killed anyone!] And what about Helicopters. Again can do the same as pretty much any Multirotor except they HAVE killed people and yet no mention of them.
The problem is not the technology, it's the idiots who go buy a DJI with 0 idea of what they are doing and lose control and fly in places they should not.
The media then plays on the fears of the average joe who doesn't know the difference between a "Drone" after seeing images like this
preditor drone and this Multirotor
I build multirotors for people all the time, I fly them all the time, and I have yet to hurt anyone or anything other than the multirotor itself.
As almost nobody (excluding the president himself) is as popular of a boogeyman here on slashdot as Feinstein, I know just from the first sentence that slashdot wants me to hate this bill! Thank you, now I don't have to worry about its content or intent, as you've already told me it is pure evil. I can go back to reading the other drudge report now instead of reading further into the summaries on the front page of this one.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
It's a shame that I somehow landed myself on the never-get-mod-points-again-ever-period list some time ago, because your comment deserves at least a +1, Insightful.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
IE mutirotar hobbiest toy planes will now be backdoored like nearly all of intel's chips (VPro).
If you don't like this, there is only one way to stop it, and it's not by voting.
An airliner on approach or in the patter is not going to see a typical consumer drone unless it hits the cockpit. They are doing 200MPH in the pattern and at least 100 - 120 when landing. Drones are too small and you are not going to see just one. Hell, it's hard enough to spot light aviation aircraft.
The control freaks just want a reason to restrict these things for whatever reason...knee jerk reaction to people being able to do what the Government does...watch others from the sky.
Then there's Diane F. That bitch would ban butter knives if she could.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Indeed! Recall the corrupt mega-rich b*tch before she causes any more tragedies. Or maybe we can have her declared mentally incompetent for her evident senility.
And be done with it. You as an ordinary citizen have no need or business flying those things, therefore you should not own any. Have a "drone amnesty" period enacted to have all those useless and dangerous devices voluntary returned for destruction - with compensation - and then anyone caught with one gets 10 years in jail. End of debate.
Every day, thousands of unlicensed people operate machines that amount to no more than whirling blades of death. These machines are powered by the distilled essence of the dead no less. They have a long history of maiming and killing the innocent, even children. You can buy these infernal machines with no background check, no license, not even an ID. The sellers of these contraptions aren't even required to be licensed.
We need to control these so-called "lawn mowers" NOW, before they kill us all!
Senator Feinstein is an abominable person. She is corrupt to the core. She also is so secure in her seat that she did not even have to run for re-election last time (she said "no" to any debates or interviews on any policy issues and the California press corps said nothing and honored her desire that they make no issue of it and not cover her opponent). Now that she is retiring, her party-picked younger clone is preparing to step into her seat. There will be no serious debate nor any real campaign - the outcome of the election is already determined.
She represents places where many of these drones are originating, yet feels free to do this, just as she has felt free to do many other things that have hurt many other industries and people in the state over the years, like supporting all the wiretapping (of everybody except her).
How does this happen?
She supports gay marriage and abortion. The Mozilla rule applies.
For large numbers of the very wealthy and politically powerful in California those two positions trump everything and any person with a different position is a non-person.
People on Slashdot need to stop whining about anything Feinstein does. Most of you will blindly support her no matter how evil she gets and you will blindly support her successor too because gay marriage is more important to you than anything else (even though you did not care about the issue in 2008 when both Hillary and Obama campaigned for the Presidency openly opposing gay marriage). Knock off all the fake outrage.
When some sh*t-for-brains regulator tries to fine me for flying my UAV that finds a missing child alive and well.
"Allow me to introduce you to the parents of the child I just located. Now YOU explain to them why what I just did is a problem."
Or better yet, I can't wait for the day when said sh*t-for-brains regulator tries to stop me from using my UAV to locate a missing child.
"Allow me to introduce you to the parents of the missing child. Now YOU explain to them why we can't use every method to locate their kid,"
How will this keep my craft within spec? I have several that don't have GPS nor do they have onboard flight controllers, technically they are drones as defined in a dictionary.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
She can go suck my middle, rear nut.
A downside of drones getting easier to fly is that more dumbasses are flying them. I've been flying them for about 2 years, so relative to a veteran RC pilot, I'm probably considered a member of the "dumbass" crowd myself. But I do make a point of flying in un-populated wide-open areas, away from people or property. I've had a few crashes, mostly related to failing to account for the odd hill or tree on an autonomous mission. Live and learn. Because of where I fly, the only person to deal with the consequence of those crashes is me. They typically amount to broken props, or having to talk a couple thousand feet to pick up the drone out of the grass.
I'm not surprised by people flying these things over highways, crowds of people, between tall buildings in metro areas, that sort of thing. That is just the sort of thing that dumbasses do, and you can never underestimate how stupid some people can be. What comes next is rules, government's way of trying to change the world so that idiots can survive in it. I'd rather not have a moron like Dianne Feinstein making the rules, but someone is going to do it.
I thought cell phones could crash airliners too, but the the FAA said it's not true.
I think FAA told Feinstein that drones can't crash airliner, so she created this bill, because she knowns more about air safety than the FAA.
there are more rules and regulation regarding where planes can fly than you could probably read with the help of all of your teachers sounding out the big words for you.
but I like to whine like any other petulant child.
just so self-important idiots like you don't have to behave in a responsible fashion. I know that you think that you feel that are so special that the lives of others are a small price to pay for your childish self-gratification, but the grownups do not agree with your delusion.
And drones have shiny things and are viewed as intruders.
Think about that.
It's illegal to fly drones in much of my state, so be advised.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
and do not let self -important idiots like you drive it. that way I don't have to worry about having to clean up any messes that occur when you feel that you are too important to follow the rules.