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Colorado Lawmakers Want To Make It a Felony To Fly a Drone Over a Wildfire (thedrive.com)
Several Colorado lawmakers are trying to urge Congress to pass a bill that would make flying unmanned aerial vehicles over wildfires a felony, citing safety concerns. The Drive reports: On Wednesday, Senators Cory Gardner (R-Colorado), Michael Bennet (D-Colorado), and Representative Scott Tipton (R-Colorado) introduced the Securing Airspace For Emergency Responders Act, which would fine people for flying UAVs over wildfires without authorization, and potentially send them to jail for a year. "When an unauthorized drone flies over a wildfire, it poses a huge threat to aircraft working to suppress the fire and forces them to ground," said Tipton in a statement. Steve Hall, a spokesman for Colorado's office of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, staunchly echoed that sentiment, claiming that firefighters face enough of a challenge navigating smoky and turbulent conditions while piloting firefighting aircraft, that adding rogue drones to the mix would only increase danger and hamper their efforts. On top of that, Hall explained that once an unauthorized drone is observed during a wildfire, firefighters ground their planes. The Denver Post first reported the news (paywalled).
Felony should only be for things that you would have been executed for in the past.
1) Police should shoot down the drone
2) Then find the pilot
3) Then the police should shoot the pilot
If you're enough of an asshole to fly over wildfires and put others at risk, you deserve to be shot.
Like another commenter said, the police should find and shoot the drone pilot. If the cops can shoot unarmed black men with impunity, there should be no objection to them shooting drone pilots for endangering the lives of others.
What if civilians are flying drones over wildfires and using them to dump water on the fire? Thus is an extremely stupid idea and only punishes people who are trying to help protect lives and property.
As a DIY drone nerd, yes please. Regulate the specific and obvious bad stuff harshly, so they won't need blanket bans on drones that hurt the rest of us.
"On top of that, Hall explained that once an unauthorized drone is observed during a wildfire, firefighters ground their planes. " This is an extremely stupid overreaction, and the safety-of-flight authorities who made it should be sentenced to one week confinement without food.
Laws are useful for punishing people after the act. In this case though, we want to prevent the act in the first place. Making it clear that this is dangerous behaviour will work in most cases, where the operator is simply not considering the potential dangers.
Encouraging drone bloggers to make a big deal about this sort of thing would probably be a lot more effective.
While it may pose a small "threat" throwing people in jail for a year or more is ridicules. People driving with a cell phone in hand pose a threat too- but we don't throw them in jail for years on end. And throwing people in jail has no real impact on safety as people aren't generally planning to commit this crime nor intentionally interfering with firefighting in the first place while flying a drone in such a situation. It's just mostly people being stupid or otherwise ignorant of the risk they are posing or otherwise don't realize there are firefighters being put in danger. So what this really will do is create another tool for police to abuse the citizenry, reporters, activists, and others they may not like for one reason or another.
Small threat? When a drone is seen near an active fire, all aircraft are grounded until it is removed from the scene. The removal of those aircraft can allow a fire to escape fire lines, to surround and entrap ground crews and many more issues. Not just increasing risk to humans but also substantially increasing the cost of fighting a fire.
Note also that the wording is up to a year. That gives them the option of going first with a misdemeanor and fine for most cases, but should a drone cause the crash of a firefighting aircraft or loss of life due to aircraft not being able to drop retardant at a critical point then they have the option of going for the felony charge. They can also go that way for repeat offenses.
Drones flying near fires is a serious problem and it needs to be stomped hard to get people to wake up and not interfere just to get some cool video for Facebook.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Punishing people for stupid things is fine, but this will not stop people who are really malicious (and will take measures to not get caught).
This will punish only the careless, uneducated (kids) and idiots. And there enlarging the punishment just does not do any good.
Proper response would be to make sure the drones do not interrupt the flight operations.
I.e. protecting planes/helicopters, disabling or grounding drones etc.
Are they also grounded when they notice small birds since they have equal mass as a drone?
small birds don't have small bombs that are lithium batteries and metal parts in them.
Why not just shoot down the drones though? It seems like losing a $300 drone should be punishment enough. It's essentially the same thing as flying a kite, so maybe felony prosecution is a bit heavy-handed.
Not quite the same severity of problem, so no. Sure, a bird strike can cause a lot of damage to a plane, but firefighting aircraft tend to be slower moving over the operational zone than in normal flight, which reduces the potential impact damage from both birds and drones. Wildlife is also generally pretty good at getting itself away from things like wildfires, assuming the route is clear and they can move fast enough, so the chances of a bird strike over the fire are actually going to be lower than normal. The extra risk comes from the fact that drones tend to be made of more robust and rigid materials - plastic and metal rather than flesh and bone - so there is more potential for damage per kg., and especially because some of those components are potentially flammable, or even explosive. The chances of it happening might be pretty low, but a battery pack igniting as it passes through a turbine or propeller could really ruin a pilot's day - or worse.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
soooo you are proposing sending in some hunters with shotguns or rifles into a wildfire to shoot down the drones? or maybe you think firefighters should be lugging around extra gear so they can take the time to hunt down drones? yeah what could possibly go wrong!
WHY DO YOU NEED A WARNING?!
Interfering with people who are fighting wildfires is so obviously stupid and reckless that there really is no excuse to do it. You have zero valid reasons to fly your idiotic drone over or around a wildfire. There needs to be no warnings, the only debate is whether the punishment should be death, prison or a flogging.
So give firefighting helicopters omnidirectional radio burst jammer, or a spoofer, or ultrasound emitters or any of the other anti-drone technology that doesn't require aiming.
What about -- house fires, hostage situations, ... ? That is, anywhere where news choppers (presumably approved) have to fly low over a scene.
These are ACTUAL harm to people's lives.... mostly intentional violent crimes. Does flying a drone around and having it drift too close to a fire really seem to fit?
Yes it does. They have caused aircraft fighting the fire to crash or to divert from their missions (putting out fires) which can cost lives of firefighters and civilians as well as property. This isn't hypothetical. It's literally no different than forcing a fire engine in your town to divert therefore slowing response times. People die when that happens. If you have a legitimate need to fly a drone over a fire then coordinate that activity with the people fighting the fire and there is no problem. Otherwise you're just some jackass trying to amuse yourself and causing problems for others. Furthermore I don't think you appreciate how fast these fires can move. If you are close enough to fly most drones over the fire then you are in legitimate physical danger and might endanger others who have to rescue you from your stupidity.
By your logic- well, you are "endangering people's lives" by speeding, following too closely, jaywalking, drinking alcohol in public, running at a pool, or playing hockey, so those should be felonies?
In some cases those things are actually felonies. Don't believe me? Go ahead and drive a car through a school zone at 100 miles per hour while drinking in public and see if that doesn't land you some time behind bars.
Now, if you flew a drone in a way that ACTUALLY caused harm to someone, perhaps THAT would justify a felony.
By your logic attempted murder isn't a crime because no one was actually harmed.
Encouraging drone bloggers to make a big deal about this sort of thing would probably be a lot more effective.
That's important but you know as well as I do that there are too many self indulgent pricks who would just go do it anyway unless they can suffer actual consequences from their actions.
If the issue is bringing down a plane/helicopter at a fire scene, why stop at large fires? What about -- house fires, hostage situations, ... ? That is, anywhere where news choppers (presumably approved) have to fly low over a scene.
You'll probably see that too in the future. There's going to be a lot of new laws written to deal with the problems caused by drones. I think this is just the tip of the spear on those.
So give firefighting helicopters omnidirectional radio burst jammer, or a spoofer, or ultrasound emitters or any of the other anti-drone technology that doesn't require aiming.
Really? Because people fighting fires don't have enough to do already? Now they are supposed to jam drones that they might not even see to keep safe from jackasses who are endangering lives and property for casual amusement?
Go watch some dashcams on youtube for awhile. Shouldn't take long to find someone that makes a (legal) lane change, followed by someone severely over-reacting by violently swerving away, then back, quickly losing control, and causing a multicar wreck.
Just because idiots over-react and do damage / threaten loss of life doesn't mean we need to make their trigger a felony.
It's no different than trying to "childproof the world". You're focusing on the wrong end of the problem.
Should flying drones over wildfires be illegal? Sure. Should speeding be illegal? Sure. Do they both elevate risks? Sure. Should they be felonies? NO.
Lets be brutally honest here. If the firefighters are honestly afraid for their lives when a drone flies around overhead, the fire marshal should be executed for sending those poor men into a dangerous situation where they could die of smoke inhalation or burn to death. And the odds of a speeder causing an injury or death on the road is many times more likely than a drone happening to collide with an bring down a plane. Surely speeders deserve the death penalty!
Most felonies are intentional, and all of them consider actual or severely high risk of damage/injury/death. A drone taking down a firefighting plane is neither intentional nor high risk. And don't kneejerk about the odds of a collision bringing down a plane - you're ignoring the slim odds of the collision occurring in the first place. It's much lower than the odds of a speeder getting into a collision, which is MUCH more likely to cause injury, and speeding of course is not a felony.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
"Hey, we couldn't drop retardant on that growing wildfire because your drone was in the way, so twenty houses and three people we could have saved got incinerated. Don't do it again you naughty boy."
Yeah, that'll do it.
soooo you are proposing sending in some hunters with shotguns or rifles into a wildfire to shoot down the drones? or maybe you think firefighters should be lugging around extra gear so they can take the time to hunt down drones? yeah what could possibly go wrong!
OK good. So it's been decided.
We need a test at birth for people who will turn into politicians so we can smother them with a pillow.
"small birds" have caused over 70,000 bird strikes to be noticed by the FAA between 2010-2016. How many drone strikes have there been?
Just another day in Paradise
and was carrying 30 gallons of water with a nozzle that could spray water on the fire??
now multiply that x10 and it could put out small fires before they can be big fires
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Let's be brutally honest. You're retarded.
Dealing with wildfires is dangerous, complicated and necessary as it is. You do not want anything that in any way, shape or form makes it more so. Examples of things which does exactly this includes drones, flown my "muh rights" morons. It's completely inconsequential whether the risks are slim or not. They are completely unnecessary! Firefighters should never have to keep drones flown by curious morons or reckless news photographers in the back of their mind. They should be allowed to concentrate 100% on doing their actual job.
Finally, your flying around with your bloody drone is indeed intentional. Or are you suggesting that your drone is likely to take off on its own, and decide to go and take a look at that fancy forest fire without you getting a word in?
While this endangers a very small but extremely valuable set of individuals, where are the laws to hinder drunk driving. Keep in mind a slap on the wrist or 3 strikes does not count. I am talking laws that cost someone their entire livelihood for getting behind the wheel drunk - minimum jail sentences of 10 years (no parole) for first time offenders and garnished wages for the rest of their lives. An extreme but necessary action as there are entirely too many people who dont take drunk driving seriously.
What it seems they want to do with this drone law is similar, make the punishment so outlandishly large only an extremely small set of stupid people would think to do it. It is sad our world is coming to this...
First, I never said it wouldn't be a crime. Most importantly, you are forgetting an extremely important legal concept- intent. In those cases, the perp INTENDED to do harm.
Involuntary Manslaughter is a felony where there was no intent to do harm. Intent is not always a consideration when there is a sufficient amount of negligence. If you drive drunk and kill or injure someone I'm sure you probably didn't mean to harm them but it's a felony all the same and rightly so. Intent does not always matter. Similarly I'm sure the drone pilots probably don't intend to do harm but when someone dies or someone's house burns down because their actions caused aircraft to be grounded for safety then they probably deserve some jail time for such reckless negligence.
...but firefighting aircraft tend to be slower moving over the operational zone than in normal flight..
Unless of course, the drone hits a helicopter's blades which are moving quite fast in all circumstances: https://fstoppers.com/drone/nt...
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I wonder what the FAA thinks about this. They're the ones who control the airspace. Not the State of Colorado.
About the only thing they could do is make it a felony to *take off* (e.g. use space that the state has jurisdiction over) somewhere near a fire.
And really, all fires of any import get a TFR (Temporary Flight Restriction) within hours. Certainly as soon as it escalates out of local control. If you fly a drone (technically a small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle in the parlance) you are supposed to understand and follow TFRs and other flight restrictions and rules.
You fly in a TFR, you get in trouble. From the feds.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
What if the drones are being used to monitor the progress and the direction of the fire in order to protect a home-owner's property.
The truth is, they're treating a mere drone in the air as if it is a hostile terrorist attack. And to be frank, the risk is minimal. Forests are huge, and even if a drone is flying while a air tanker is dousing flames, the odds are very slim of the drone impacting the aircraft.
It should be a misdemeanor. Impact should be a felony.
"Small threat? When a drone is seen near an active fire, all aircraft are grounded until it is removed from the scene."
Blaming a blatant over-reaction as justification of threat determination is just stupid. And if they see a large bird over the forest - do they ground all the planes?
I am sure many large birds enter the air while fleeing a fire, and pose a similar equivalent risk to aircraft. So we should ground all fire fighting aircraft if anyone sees a large big in the air.
Except the drone was not in the way. It was 20 miles over there. But they chose not to fly.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Small threat? When a drone is seen near an active fire, all aircraft are grounded until it is removed from the scene.
The choice to ground the aircraft due to an imaginary thrat is what caused the harm.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Witness the pointlessness of politicians at work. Wildfires are declared a TFR (Temporary Flight Restriction) area by the FAA. Flying in one without authorization is already a crime. Try making it stick though. Last summer during the Goodwin Fire here in Arizona, some asshat flew his Phantom around one of the fire observation towers. He was caught later and arrested but the Sheriff's Office was unable to determine for sure when he was flying because DJI has the stupid thing encrypted.
Are you dumb enough to think small birds hang out near wildfires?
What if the drones are being used to monitor the progress and the direction of the fire in order to protect a home-owner's property.
First, that's the point of having "unauthorized" in the law. If the drone has a legitimate reason to be there, it can get authorized.
Second, your property is not more valuable than other people's property that gets destroyed because you grounded the firefighting aircraft just so you could have a look-see.
Third, your drone grounding the firefighting aircraft is a fantastic way to harm that home-owner's property, since you are interfering with the ability to fight the fire.
Fourth, this entire premise is idiotic. "Monitoring" the fire does absolutely nothing to protect the property.
And to be frank, the risk is minimal. Forests are huge, and even if a drone is flying while a air tanker is dousing flames, the odds are very slim of the drone impacting the aircraft.
I'm always amused at the people who cavalierly volunteer other people to take on additional risk. "But I want cool video to put on the Internet" is a really shitty reason to add to that risk.
It should be a misdemeanor. Impact should be a felony.
Good news! The proposed law lets prosecutors charge a fine, misdemeanor, or felony based on what happens with the drone.
Whats you're thought process here? I can think of a few possibilities that apply whether you are or are not the same AC as the OP...
1) Trolling (duh)
2) Willfully ignorant (i.e. didn't read or didn't comprehend a well reasoned response)
3) Purposefully antagonistic (read a well reasoned response and are hurt that your original thesis is easily refuted so you lash out like a caged animal)
Hopefully there is something else at work here because all 3 of those options make this thread worse for everyone. Next time when someone is not in perfect alignment with your 5 second armchair expert analysis, take an extra 30 seconds, 3 deep breaths, and think about how imminently being an asshole will improve your life.
Because out-of-control aircraft are equally hazardous.
We've had aircraft have to veer out of their intended retardant drops because a Drone crossed their flight path. Other Drones have been hovering beside flare-ups (to get the good video) again getting in the way of the firefighters. These drones are not 20 miles away. They are right over the burn zones interfering with firefighting.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Birds tend to fly away from wildfires. Not hover over them trying to get good video to upload to YouTube.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Private drones should be able to fly unmolested, even if there is a fire, this is a newsworthy/noteworthy, and there SHOULD be an allowed way to observe this aerially without creating a hazard; someone's theoretical issues with it an obstinance against change should not result in attempts to make laws criminalizing operation of drones --- possible collision with a drone is just a theoretical threat which should not draw any reaction other than maybe requiring some pilots to change their behavior to adapt, so long as any drone encountered is controlled and not TRULY threatening or in direct path of firefighting craft.
Hall explained that once an unauthorized drone is observed during a wildfire, firefighters ground their planes.
This is a procedural defect on Firefighters' part --- If they believe there is a danger, they should develop for their pilots appropriate tactics and defenses for handling `unwanted` drones. Including equipping planes with weighted nets that can be shot/deployed to forcefully remove a drone from the aircraft's path that comes within X feet of their aircraft or becomes an imminent threat.
Why not just shoot down the drones though? It seems like losing a $300 drone should be punishment enough. It's essentially the same thing as flying a kite, so maybe felony prosecution is a bit heavy-handed.
So you're saying the Forest Service should equip its planes and helicopters with drone-killer air-to-air missiles. Cool! Or maybe directed EMP weapons?
Or, instead of militarizing the USFS, we could just attach a heavy enough penalty to being caught flying a drone over a forest fire to ensure that the word quickly spreads through the drone hobbyist community that breaking the law and endangering USFS personnel who are already doing a hard and dangerous job will have a very bad outcome. Its much less sexy, but a lot cheaper and probably more effective.
Criminal penalties shouldn't be excessive, but they're also not just about equitable punishment for actual damage. Their primary intent is deterrence, and legislators have to factor in not only the level of societal risk posed by the crime, but also the likelihood of being caught. Crimes that can easily be gotten away with often get stiffer penalties. This is why mail fraud and check forgery are felonies, even when the amounts of money involved are small.
The theory is that people apply an "expected risk" model when deciding whether to do something illegal, and the word "expected" here has roughly the same meaning as it does in statistics. The expected value or expected cost is the value/cost multiplied by the probability of receiving/bearing it. In cases like this, be probability of getting caught and prosecuted is extremely low (forest fires are big and in remote areas and drones are small) so if the only risk is the loss of the drone, or even that plus a few hundred dollars in fines, people may decide to do it anyway. A heavier penalty serves to overcome the low probability of getting caught.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
So while people are burning to death in their homes we going to start putting people in jail because they're flying drones.
You know what should be a felony is this nasty police state the beurocrats in Colorado are building.
I'm all for doing something about it, but a felony seems excessive - at least if we're talking about your typical hobbyist sized drones. Many of those are mostly plastic and styrofoam - not that I'd ever suggest someone should do it, but let's also not exaggerate the threat. Most felonies are associated with actual significant harm, or at least a very high likelihood (e.g. drunk driving) not the mere remote possibility - a misdemeanor seems more appropriate.
Also, most drives can fly at most 400 feet high, so it also seems questionable as to why operations need to be suspended altogether.
drop the retardent onto the drone.
it poses a huge threat to aircraft working to suppress the fire and forces them to ground," said Tipton in a statement.
I'm sorry, I don't see this. How the hell? How the hell is a couple pounds of flying plastic going to pose a threat to an AIRCRAFT?
Maybe I'm naive or not seeing it, or whatever else, but really, how the heck is that a threat to safety? What could a drone possibly do to an aircraft in terms of damage and causing the aircraft to abort it's mission or whatever? Is there some evidence of this actually occurring?
I imagine the real story is:
Aircraft Pilot: OH FUCK there's a spec of something flying around near the fire, ABORT MISSION!
Really? How does a flying piece of plastic post any more threat than say.. a bird of equal size and mass? Other than the obvious, birds probably not going to be flying near a wildfire.
Someone doesn't want something to be filmed by flying drones, is what I think is the real source of concern.
drone strikes so far is about a handful, but then there are more than 70'000 times the number of birds to drones. With drones increasing the fear is it is only a matter of time till one of the drone strikes is fatal.
Securing Airspace For Emergency Responders Act, aka. SAFER Act.
They aren't worried about the $50 lightweight drones you can buy from the toy store. Those really don't pose a serious threat to aircraft because they weigh almost nothing and are flimsy plastic things. Besides, given that range on those is a few hundred feet, whoever is operating it would be close by (which means being close enough to fly one over a raging wildfire is suicidal). It's the drones that cost thousands of dollars and can weigh several pounds or more, and can be operated remotely by someone miles away which are causing problems. For the most part, these weigh considerably more than a bird.
Besides, there really isn't anything they can do about birds and the occasional bird strike is a fact of life - but there is something they can do about drones.
FAA has authority over airspace, not a bunch of state politicians. FAA rules already forbid operation of aircraft in emergency zones without authorization. Penalties are likely minimal.
The helicopter pilots are just being little bitches. How about man up and do your job instead of going home over a drone?
Have someone else triangulate on the drone control signal, and walk up and take away the control. Fastest way to triangulate on cheap drone control would in fact be yet more drones.
Get used to it - you're going to be flying with drones in the future. If you can't do your job, you'll be replaced with...more drones.
We know that drones pose a major security risk in situations like this. I just don't understand why there isn't a law mandating an off switch.
Radios are cheap most drones have some kind of communication. I have no problem with a simple requirement that all drones sold in "America" insert country of choice. Are required to have this off switch installed. This would mean in situations where human being are at risk the drones can simply be switched off.
SO you're saying "Idiot administrators overreact and cause problems because someone may have seen a drone at one point" ... and that's the drone pilots' fault?
No, it is the administrators that are wrong. Drones don't cause plane crashes. Ever.