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Science Teacher Arrested After Crashing Drone At US Open
An anonymous reader writes: We all had that science teacher growing up — the one who took his classroom experiments a little too far. The one with the potato cannon. The one who made you wonder how he didn't get into trouble in his spare time. Well, it's finally happened for one science teacher from New York City. The 26-year-old man was arrested last night after he crashed a drone into some empty seats at the U.S. Open. He was charged with reckless endangerment, reckless operation of a drone, and operating a drone in a New York City public park outside a prescribed area for doing so. Nobody was injured, but the drone did fly through the arena while a pair of tennis players were in the middle of a match. The game was briefly interrupted when the drone crashed.
Just an idiot teacher with a harmless drone this time, but next time it could be a muslim with an explosive drone
Idiots like this are why "we can't have nice things"
Privacy issues aside, morons like this are why the drone-boys are going to be facing some new laws in the not-so-distant future.
What was he doing, going around saying "Anyone seen my drone?". Why didn't he toss the controller into the water get the hell out of there with a sign off to the class of "Thats what happens when you don't concentrate kids. Now everyone into the bus, fast!"
These people flying fronts are clueless and dangerous to others. This past July we had 5-6 drones flying over crowds of thousands and into the fireworks. Luckily nothing happened but I'd like to see them arrested for endangering the public as well. Idiots.
Douches like this prick are why we can't have nice things.
I fly all sorts of RC aircraft, Quads, fixed wing plane's, Helis, even a flying lawn mower (model, not actually a lawnmower) and I've been doing it for 25 years and never has there been an issue of people getting upset about it until recently.
You know why? Cheap electronics introducing artificial stability at a price that allows any fucking moron without the slightest clue to buy one and manage to fly it for more than 10 seconds. Before artificial stability (i.e. before there was any hope of an RC quadcopter), pricks like this would have bought one, flown it for 10 seconds, crashed it in his front yard and that would be the end of it because he wouldn't be willing to spend that money again for another 10 seconds of flight time until he learned to fly. He'd never learn to fly because he's not bothering to try, he's just throwing it in the air without understanding how/why/when its going to come down and what effects thats going to have on others.
When I see assholes like this, I tell them to get their fucking quad out of the air immediately or I'm calling the cops, and I've called them twice, the last for some asshole flying over a high school football game. Guy was a software dev at a large tech company, should fucking know better and understand that a 5 pound object falling on your head from even 10 feet above is WAY beyond potentially lethal.
So take this worthless fuck out back, string him up by his testicles and keep him the fuck out of RC * so he doesn't fuck it up for the rest of us.
This shit is why the FAA cares, and I'm 100% with them on it. I don't want additional laws, but this is a real problem in a new arena that previously had barriers to entry that kept idiots out. The modern flight controllers (which I use and love) are like exploit kits for script kiddies. They give ability to do something without the tempering that comes with learning how to do it 'the hard way', or understanding the consequences of what you're doing.
I don't have a good solution to this problem because the problem is caused by adults who haven't grown up yet or are too selfish/ignorant to care and those are problems we've been dealing with since the beginning of time without solving, but it does have to be addressed, which problem means I'm going to get screwed in the process.
I can not stress this statement enough: The guy flying that drone was an ignorant fucking asshole. 50 lashes wouldn't be enough.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Idiots like this are why "we can't have nice things"
Privacy issues aside, morons like this are why the drone-boys are going to be facing some new laws in the not-so-distant future.
Took the words right out of my mouth....
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
Selfish idiots like this are going to ruin the hobby for all of us. The FAA rules are pretty clear: 5 miles of an airport, nowhere near stadiums.
Quads fall out of the sky. A motor fails, a battery unexpectedly dies (or explodes), a sensor goes haywire... the number of things that can cause a quad to quit working is endless. If something quits, it drops like a stone - and a responsible pilot know that.
I hate the idea of an R/C license... but if it keeps the selfish idiots grounded then it's probably the way to go. Unfortunately.
Your drone is first flown into your face at maximum forward velocity.
It is then dropped on your head from 30m, powered off.
These toy drones can barely carry a camera let alone a payload and yet you want people to be afraid of them?
I think you had your "muslim = bomber" agenda and just wanted to tack it onto any story as a bit of scaremongering.
The summary states that the teacher was in the middle of an experimen when he crashed the RC aircraft. Was there an actual experiment, or was the submitter just trying to pad the story into something bigger than it really was?
It's the US Open, watched in person by thousands, and on TV by millions but rather than making it all about the tennis players, this dipshit feels that the Open should be all about him and his toys. So he flys his drone over the stadium and ends up crashing into some seats, causing a delay in the match-in-progress, lucky not to have hurt someone in the stands. He's yet one more example of an adolescent in adult form who is incapable of recognizing that this is not an appropriate place to play and not too overly concerned about its ramifications. Fines and a little jail time are exactly what he deserves.
Idiots like this are why "we can't have nice things"
Privacy issues aside, morons like this are why the drone-boys are going to be facing some new laws in the not-so-distant future.
Furthermore, behavior like this gives us an idea of what would happen if 'flying cars' were ever readily available.
I don't see what his being a science teacher has to do with any of this. The summary makes it sound like he was doing something kooky to teach his kids in a unique way, but he wasn't doing this to teach anything. He was just another irresponsible dumbass with a drone.
Also "autonomous" vehicles (which aren't really autonomous, after all).
You are welcome on my lawn.
It's looking more and more like something akin to ham radio licensing should be required for drone over a certain size and/or range.
Even an easy exam would insure people have basic safety knowledge and establish a minimum level of accountability.
that made science interesting and got the whole class paying attention, who erred, as humans often do, drawing the ire of many a melodramatic, pretentious pussy who can't put events in perspective. Tens of thousands of people die every day from preventable situations and the big fucking deal is someone interrupted your self-indulgent couch potato time?
Anyone else wondering if this "science teacher" is really working for someone like the FAA, and pulling this stunt to prove the need for anti-drone legislation?
Sadly, I find it easy to believe that it's really an idiot who thought he could get some "awesome footage of the US Open" for YouTube, but maybe it's really a conspiracy by an evil government agency?
morons like this are why the drone-boys are going to be facing some new laws in the not-so-distant future.
He was arrested. Why do we need "new laws" when his behavior is already illegal under existing law?
Even I had a science teacher who would probably be jailed/fired for the stuff they did. We built catapults/trebuchets for our final project one year, one of the more ambitions students I think built one about 15ft tall that could throw a pumpkin a few hundred feet. Another year he taught us about "combustion" by literally putting together what would probably be called an IED by modern law enforcement by putting a cup of finely milled flour in a paint can with a candle and blowing air through a hose to aerosolize the flour and cause a flash fire which imprinted the paint cans lid into the ceiling tile. Sad that in the "land of the free" every generation seems to have a story about something that was done by practically everyone in their generation but is a jail-able crime by today's society.
Furthermore, behavior like this gives us an idea of what would happen if 'flying cars' were ever readily available.
Whether it's an excuse or not, you really have to agree with Moller (sp?) here. If you get a flying car, it really has to fly itself. A roadable airplane, not so much, but that's a whole other beast (and you can buy one already.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm glad to see that asshole get arrested. He, and others like him are ruining it for the rest of us who USE OUR FUCKING HEADS.
Drones are the new laser pointers
The guy who lost his permitted king cobra in florida has had nothing happen to him. The guy in texas who lost his cobra was killed by it. And then there is the guy in california who was bit by the rattlesnake he was playing with. So should we ban all snakes?
Many years ago when I worked as a night mechanic we built a tennis ball cannon - some exhaust tubing with a firing hole drilled it in. We could load a rag + tennis ball into the tube, add oxygen + acetylene as propellant, and then ignite it. It was AMAZING how far that tennis ball would fly! I quickly realized that these improvised mortars could also propel more dangerous loads, so I quit the "experiment". I didn't want to hurt anyone.
It weighs less than one pound.
:P Then i guess by "BitZtream's" definition: your quad copter isn't "worth a shit"
This really has nothing much to do with drones or technology though, and everything to do with mass and stupidity... or is it mass stupidity?
Replace "drone" with "heavy object" and "flight" with one or more of various other mechanisms available to give heavy objects gravitational potential energy and or momentum. This can be an idiot throwing rocks at people, a psychopath dropping pennies off the Eiffel Tower or a clumsy buffoon flying a heavy drone around in public... you can replace the things but not the people.
My abiding memory of science teaching was the chemistry teacher who wanted to demonstrate the reactivity of phosphorous with air. He pulled a large stick of phosphorus (oxidised on the outside) out of a jar of water and carefully sliced off a small section. He then rushed to drop the rest of the stick back into the jar of water, but he missed and it bounced off the rim of the jar, landed on the table and promptly burst into flames and began to fill the room with fumes.
Science!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
The same reason we need new gun control laws once someone breaks them to commit a crime with a gun. I guess people think when you break a law, it needs to be fixed, like your dishwasher.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
You're mistaking "need" for "going to be facing." You won't need new laws. You're going to get new ones with harsher maximum penalties even if you don't need them. I tried mentioning this and was modded to oblivion quite some time ago when people were first insisting that they could do anything they wanted with them. Good luck with that.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I said the same thing in the comments above, but nobody seems to care if the story is real or not. The fact that he was a science teacher is absolutely irrelevant to the story, and the submitter flat-out lied by implying that it was some kind of "experiment".
Drones are going to crash, that's just going to happen. People are only caring now that it's happening out in the open in the U.S.? It's been happening all over for a while now. Seriously. This is only news now?!
Firearms are protected by the 2nd amendment. I am afraid drones are not. I guarantee in 10 years, to buy a drone you will have to...
- mandatory background check
- mandatory 3 hour online drone safety course that costs $100 and has to be renewed with a new course every 5 years
- mandatory annual safety inspection of the drone that costs $50
- mandatory national registration markings on the drone tied to you in a federal database
No joke.
Someone you trust is one of us.
As we have seen time and time again, people cannot be trusted to use drones responsibly and drones need to be banned or at least heavily regulated.
One needs quite a bit of training and licenses to fly an aircraft. At least the same should be for for drone owners and operators.
Unless the drone had a gun attached to it. Then you would be able to walk right out of the corner store with a hunting drone under one arm and a case of beer under the other.
Because otherwise the evil British would be able to take over the country and quarter soldiers in private homes or whatever it is that you're supposed to be protecting against.
take your drop and go to the playoff
Why do we need "new laws"
Because the existing laws don't seem to be preventing this sort of behavior. In reality, its more of a statistical effect. Where the large increase in the number of drones (RC aircraft, etc.) in the hands of morons result in such incidents occurring more frequently.
Have gnu, will travel.
"Her initial reaction, she said afterward, was that it might have been a bomb."
Every time I hear crap like that I get a little sadder and hate people just a little more. I cannot fully express just how stupid I think it is that so many people today respond to anything they don't expect and recognize by thinking that it is a bomb. You would think that everyone was a PTSD scarred veteren of some particularly horrible war even though most have never been threatened by anything like that.
RC flying hobby craft have been around for decades, why the sudden spike in idiot douchebags flying them into places they don't belong?
as a science teacher he should understand the physics involved
LOL.
"Your honor, please hear me out. Despite being a science teacher, I didn't have a solid understanding of gravity, and that's why my plane crashed."
If only he had paid attention that day in school, he could have averted the disaster.
Again, LOL. This story has absolutely nothing to do with science or being a science teacher.
Except that isn't the way the gun laws work anywhere in the US.
Work in reality, not in your assumption of how reality works.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Couldn't one of the tennis players just knock it down? Heck, even Chimpanzees can figure out how to do that
Because the existing laws don't seem to be preventing this sort of behavior.
How do you know how much of a problem this would be if competent science teachers didn't worry about consequences?
Furthermore, behavior like this gives us an idea of what would happen if 'flying cars' were ever readily available.
Yeah, I mean look at all the automobiles recklessly driven through parks, sidewalks and sports fields. If only we had some way to designate areas where they could and couldn't go.
It it was a DRONE, it probably wouldn't have crashed and wouldn't be flying manually controlled. Title should be "Numbnut crashes his quadcopter at the Open" with a photo of the him titled "Would you let this man teach your children?".
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I have a quad-copter with a 4MP camera, that is good enough to do roof / solar-panel inspections. It weighs less than one pound.
How high a roof?
If a strike from 5 lb drone falling 10 ft can be lethal, how safe is it to be caught standing unawares beneath your 1 lb drone as it falls 30 to 40 ft?
No laws can prevent stupidity - and sometimes it is the police and/or AD being stupid.
Back in high school, our physics teacher had us bring our firearms to school for class after we learned about momentum. Parents had to OK it, the firearms were left with the assistant principal until class time. The teacher maintained control of every round until just before firing. No danger at all.
The entire class walked outside through the door in the physics class room and we shot different firearms at different targets - all on school grounds - standing 20 ft from the building.. When a shotgun round hits a full milk jug and when a rifle round hit is are 2 very different things. A 9mm handgun and a .45 are different too. Not everyone brought guns that day, so we shared.
Thanks to some luck for the class, a student was able to bring a dead hog in that day which couldn't be eaten/sold and we all got to shoot at that too. Makes it pretty clear what a firearm can do to a person. Should be mandatory for all firearm training classes, IMHO. Sorta like those drivers ed movies with all the accidents.
Turned me off of hunting, but I still like to target shoot. Drones would be fun targets.
Drones are a major development and as such need to be compared with other major developments as far as issues like safety are concerned. Yes, peaceful drones will kill or harm people in accidents from time to time. In the near future we will all know someone who was smacked and harmed by a drone. Now compare that with automobiles. Automobiles are a recent development in this world and they kill people every day. How about motorcycles? We all know people who have died or suffered a serious injury from the use of motorcycles. Or how about locomotives? The same thing applies. Or how about vacation cruise ships? So maybe we should only compare drones with things we feel we really don't have to have. How about private air craft used only for a hobby? How about gymnastics or throwing a frisbe or baseballs or bats? What we are seeing right now are knee jerk reactions to a new kid on the block. Yes drones will have some negative side effects like every other thing that comes down the pike. But we have no great reason to be concerned at all until we can quantify the degree of harm or benefit that may be determined over time and the answer may be quite complex. For example we know how much good personal computers have done but we do not know how human health may have suffered due to over use of personal computers. And don't even go there with smart phones. The body count on smart phones is high. Some people simply can not drive without talking on their smart phones and the crashes are well documented. The commentary on drone negatives really is sort of silly in my opinion.
Except that you are wrong because in some states you can at a Wal-Mart do exactly that. You can buy a rifle, ammo and a case of beer. So maybe before you go correcting people, you should know what you are talking about.
If only he'd killed some brown people, he'd be fine and maybe the President could brag about it.
What do you have against beer?
if competent science teachers
Because being a science teacher (competent or otherwise) isn't a precondition for a drone operator's license.
Have gnu, will travel.
How is it that this jackass says something so foolish, and I'm the one who gets modded down "Troll"?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Drones illegal? no problem, it's no longer a drone, it's a R/C multi-tor with a camera on it.
I wonder what the legal definition of 'drone' is.
I suspect they will require licensing / registration for R/C which is fairly laughable for enforcement.
Subject says it all...
Absolutely. I was thinking in terms of the popular fantasy of what having a flying car would be like, and one more reason why the reality could not be anything like that.
My guess is that automation of the flying of flying cars would be a simpler problem than the automation of road vehicles, but there are a host of more difficult problems to be solved before such a vehicle is feasible. One of them is noise.
For those of us who like to fly, the advent of flying cars would probably be the end of our hobby.
That's completely missing the point of not knowing how bad it would be without the existing laws. If this is newsworthy, then it's rare... and any law that prevents 100% of occurrences probably has costs that outweigh its benefits.