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Drone Hobbyists Find Flaws In 'Close Call' Reports
An anonymous reader writes: The people and agencies pushing for strict drone regulation have no trouble coming up with a list of dangerous drone-related incidents. This includes not only the recent drone crashes that have been picked up by the media, but also reports of "close calls," where drones have allegedly approached full-size aircraft. But a new study by drone hobbyists finds that most of these "close calls" were anything but. Of 764 such incidents reported to the FAA, only 27 were actually described as "near misses" by the pilots involved. None of the incidents involved mid-air collisions, and some have involved military drones rather than hobbyist ones. The people who did the study suggest that we should find a better way of classifying these drone-related situations so legislators have accurate information from which to design regulations.
"Drone hobbyists" redefine "close call" as "near miss". News at 11.
They can stick their heads in the sand until they get some collisions and it's too late to have any reasonable regulations or they could start figuring out how to keep drones out of aircraft corridors.