Slashdot Mirror
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.
>> we should find a better way of classifying X so legislators have accurate information from which to design regulations
Why start now? Besides, it's not the legislators that get involved in "regulations" these days, instead its often committees full of unelected people working for this or that agency.
A operator running a drone that can hover near motionless may not consider things a 'near miss'. On the other hand, an airline pilot flying a jumbo jet that can not be maneuvered travelling at several hundred miles an hour is something completely different. At the speeds Jumbo jets travel, by the time they see something as small as a drone it's already passed by them. That's a near miss. They saw it. There's no time for them to avoid an object like that. So while the drone operators are bitching that - hey I was near a half mile or a mile away. Or even two miles away. The airline pilots are saying - get the hell out of my way. I can't turn and by the time I see your little hobby I'm either running it over or passed it putting my entire crew and my passengers at risk. It's not even an argument.
so legislators have accurate information from which to design regulations
Pfft! Since when have legislators ever cared about the accuracy of information when drafting bills? If Congress decides it wants to demonize hobbyist drones, it's going to do so regardless of what the FAA reports.
Since 9-11, concresscritters on both sides of the aisle have habitually either knowingly and willingly consumed disinformation, or ignored accurate information when it didn't support their predetermined goals.
I can see the fnords!
Who are these hobbyists?
Did anybody think to ask the AMA? The organization that kept RC hobbyists out of these kinds of troubles for 50+ years before RTF quads became the latest craze.
Quad hobbyists need only pay attention to the god damn rules that were set before they were born, not get all self righteous about things they apparently don't care to understand.
It's really pretty simple: Don't fly near airports, stay under 400 feet, if you see _any_ traffic, land, don't fly directly over crowds
They could be doing something productive like me, flying a scale predator drone near paranoid groups protesting.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Drunk drivers find flaws in DUI reports... even one is too many.
This is dumb and irrational. It is expensive to enforce DUI. Enforcement takes up police time, uses jail space, and takes incarcerated people out of the productive economy. That is reasonable if it saves thousands of lives. It is not reasonable to prevent ONE guy from driving home from a bar. Scale matters.
Likewise, if the "drone problem" is being exaggerated twenty-fold (as TFA claims) that is a serious accusation. The FAA is an organization of pilots, for pilots, and by pilots, and they have a history of impeding drone use. If the FAA has been lying, then someone should be held accountable.
FAA rules on aircraft separation is quite strict. 1000 meters, horizontal separation and 1000 feet of vertical separation between aircraft. Any violation of this rule will be deemed to be an incident. It does not matter whether it results in any kind of accident or near misses. Any violation of separation has to be reported to the FAA and investigated by FAA. Not sure how the hobbyist organization determined separation. Also not sure if the hobbyists understand the significance of the rules and compliance by FAA.
It looks like some kind of lobbying, astro-turfing and pressure to be applied to FAA to go lenient on the drone industry. 20 pound soft birds do enormous damage to airplanes, 50 pound hard metal drones are really a serious threat.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Um... Would you apply that logic to murder, larceny, rape?
Yes, of course. If there was ONE murder, ONE larceny, and ONE rape every year, then we could shift resources away from police and prisons. Duh.
You seem to ignore the fact that money not spent on policing can be used to save lives elsewhere. If the murder rate is low, spend less money on police, and more on medicine research, better education, greener energy etc. Those are also life saving expenses.
Shachar