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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).
Reckless endangerment of human life? Sounds execution-worthy to me.
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.
misdemeanour for endangering peoples lives? I think not. If anything what they are proposing sounds too light.
I think it was attempted sarcasm/humour from the OP, I doubt anyone could be quite that big a moron.
"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.
>"misdemeanour for endangering peoples lives? I think not. If anything what they are proposing sounds too light."
That is super-dramatic. Let's think about typical felonies for a moment:
Murder
Rape
Kidnapping
Robbery
Arson
Extortion
Blackmail
Manslaughter
Grand larceny
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? 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? We probably already have too many things mis-categorized as felonies (like simple copyright infringement, some drug possession).
Now, if you flew a drone in a way that ACTUALLY caused harm to someone, perhaps THAT would justify a felony. We don't want to continue a march into a police state.
Things like 'driving a car' and such. Indeed...
When it causes aircraft trying to fight a fire to crash yes. Or when those same aircraft have to waive off of drop runs because of a drone, letting a fire break free of lines, possibly entrapping fire crews or citizens on the ground?
A potential Felony is proper. I would hope they would start off with a heavy fine but repeat violations or causing one of the above results should pull the felony charge and year penalty.
Drones near fires has become a serious problem and needs to be stomped hard and fast before people do start dying.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
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.
I have been on the ground in a couple of large fires and you just don't have time for air traffic control for other aircraft. You have multiple helicopters working in already dangerous conditions moving as fast as possible to inhibit the fire frount. No radar and low level. Drones are a pain in the ass and need to be banned from the area, same as other aircraft.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
And this happened in reality and not just in your head?
small birds don't have small bombs that are lithium batteries and metal parts in them.
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!
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.
Don't forget possession of a short lobster.
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.
Has there been a single case of that occurring? Or just reports of pilots seeing drones? Drones don't typically fly high enough to interfere with aircraft, though low flying firefighting equipment is probably an exception. Damage from birds is orders of magnitude more likely than from a drone, and occurs on a regular basis...over 70,000 incidents between 2010 and 2016 according to FAA reports. Do they stop flying in the area when they see birds? No, and they shouldn't. This is a simple overreaction to something that's a non-issue, and they have much more important things to legislate.
Just another day in Paradise
"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
Well then it probably wouldn’t be “unauthorized” now, would it?
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?
Sightseeing drones are a big problem in fire country, since a lot of wildfire fighting takes place in the air, with aircraft loaded at gross and in turbulence. And coming soon, drones will be involved on the side of firefighters.
In the past, if you have made something fly over a wildfire, you would have been executed for witchcraft.
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.
Manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter both lack intent to harm people.
Yeah. I get the need to crack down, but with the absurdly high imprisonment rate in the US and the extremely serious implications of having a felony on the rap sheet this is surely overkill. Big huge fine, sure, as long as the judge has the discretion to differentiate between ignorance and malice. But prison and a felony rap? Too much. And keep in mind , Colorado is a three strikes state , so we have to consider the possibility of someone doing a mandatory extreme length prison sentense for flying a drone, possibly with the misguided intention of being helpful somehow
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
But this is a hypothetical. I'm not aware of *any* cases of this actually happening. A plane crashing into a drone for the most place is going to just break the drone. Those Cessnas are surprisingly durable little planes and people regularly survive them crashing
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
...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...
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
What part of drone did you miss?
yvan eht nioj
What part of the rest of the summary did I not read?
yvan eht nioj
Has there been a single case of that occurring? Or just reports of pilots seeing drones?
Yes. Many.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...
https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal....
PS: Can't they just shoot the drone or something?
No sig today...
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!
Per the articles cited, said drones were simply observed and were not interfering with operations, however there was a risk that they could and as such the applicable firefighting agencies ended operations per their policy due to violation of a Temporary Flight Restriction not being honored. As such, it remains perceived harm, not actual - unless the overreaction where all operations should cease because a bird-sized and weighted object is in the vicinity.
Thirty four characters live here.
Like being gay or being a witch? Hm, I think I hate your standard...
Can I mod something +1 Scary if it's true but I wish it weren't?
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.
When it causes aircraft trying to fight a fire to crash yes.
"When it causes", indeed. Contrast firing a gun into the air with firing a gun into a person.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
GPP was asking has there been a case of a plane crashing because it hit a drone. You link stories of pilots scared of nothing.
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."
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.
make the punishment so outlandishly large only an extremely small set of stupid people would think to do it.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Have gnu, will travel.
I would hope they would start off with a heavy fine but repeat violations or causing one of the above results should pull the felony charge and year penalty.
Pfft. Heavy fines are for vehicular manslaughterers, CEOs and bankers. This is a dumb person with a toy. Expect them to go after maximum sentence every single time. Hell if the guy ends up flying his drone with with hacked software he pirated online, we could probably lock the guy up for life.
Damage from birds is orders of magnitude more likely than from a drone
What is more likely, a strike or damage? A strike is more likely, but given one is soft gooey and all hard bits are hollow and brittle actual damage from a strike is orders of magnitude more likely from a drone.
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.
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?
Err there are people who get locked up for such things. So yes his logic holds. Well the first couple anyway. You're bordering on stupidity for the last few: e.g. the act of drinking in public doesn't make you a danger to anyone, running at a pool, .... like what the fuck, and playing hockey you're not a danger to anyone who hasn't specifically accepted the risks involved by joining the exercise.
We probably already have too many things mis-categorized as felonies (like simple copyright infringement, some drug possession).
Those two I agree with. The former shouldn't be any criminal matter in the slightest, and the latter shouldn't even be a misdemeanor unless you're caught selling it.
Well you see, Mr. Edwards, we did arrive to your house just as the fire started to get a little big. But you were outside and ranting angrily, so per our policies we just around and watched your house burn. You understand though, it's not personal. No hard feelings, eh?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
And now you're being told that flying a drone over a wildfire is dangerous and not allowed because it can cause harm by interfering with operations.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Are you dumb enough to think small birds hang out near wildfires?
Damage from birds is orders of magnitude more likely than from a drone, and occurs on a regular basis...
A bird getting in the way of an aircraft is considered a capital crime, and the bird is executed on the spot.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
Suggesting that we should kill people for being reckless is itself reckless and I therefore propose that we start with your dumb ass.
And when you fire that gun into the air you totally know the bullet just exits the atmosphere, travels to the sun and is disintegrated in hot plasma, right? It totally doesn't fall back down to Earth and hits something.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
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.
"soft gooey" has dropped quite a few planes, There's actual evidence of it. Come back when you have some for your case.
Just another day in Paradise
And yet, they are vastly different crimes with vastly different penalties.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Fires have TFRs in place to keep non-responding aircraft out. All the responding aircraft are VFR traffic and coordinating amongst themselves, not with ATC.
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A bullet fired at a ballistic trajectory can definitely kill someone when it lands.
A bullet fired straight up isn't going to do much, if any, damage.
Because out-of-control aircraft are equally hazardous.
You don't wait until people start dying before you fix a problem (this is why they grounded flights in the first place), especially a problem that can be fixed with little to no side effects, like banning drones near wildfires.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
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.
Drones are "birds" too!
Just another day in Paradise
Sure they're different crimes, but in many states firing into the air (at least within a city) is still considered a felony offense, precisely because it has the potential to kill people. A felony is absolutely appropriate for deliberately reckless behavior that can kill people (same thing should be, and sometimes is, true of things like swatting or shining a laser at a plane).
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
misdemeanour for endangering peoples lives?
The problem with so many laws, regulations, etc is one of unintended consequences.
With such a law in place, if somebody out piloting a drone spots a wildfire starting, they may decide not to report the fire for fear of prosecution. So then any potential benefit from drone-related crowd-sourced wildfire data reporting is seriously impacted if not practically eliminated.
As more and more people fly drones, crowd-sourced early wildfire detection from drone pilot reports will become ever more useful. I'd think one would want to take special care that any laws enacted don't throw the baby out with the bathwater regarding privately owned drones, but then, we *are* talking about politicians here.
Does the proposed law make exceptions for the above scenario? Does this proposed law make a distinction between fires where firefighting/emergency aircraft are actually in use and fires where firefighting aircraft are not in use and/or cannot be used?
I understand the safety issues and the need to set out ground rules, but I also understand laws and regulations intended to increase safety often cut both ways and that blanket banning something because of a relatively rare danger can cause the loss of the far more common greater good that may come from a particular thing or activity like the operation of privately owned drones.
Any laws, regulations, and such need to be carefully thought out with secondary effects in mind and written with broad judicial discretion baked in and low thresholds for dismissal of charges. Let's not be quick to throw out the possible good with the bad by enacting hastily-written, poorly thought out, knee-jerk, political-grandstanding legislation. Sadly, we're stuck with such legislation far too often because politicians want their face-time on the 24-hr news cycle demagoguing their agendas and berating the opposition as slow to act and therefor ineffective.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
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.
That's 240 pounds of water; which is orders of magnitude higher than the weight capacity of consumer drones, AND that's still an insignificant amount of water for firefighting --- come back when you can carry 20,000 gallons of water or 15000 gallons of fire ratardants.
That is super-dramatic. Let's think about typical felonies for a moment:
Your list is a lot more dramatic that the OP's post, consisting almost entirely of violent felonies. Many non-violent crimes are felonies, including forgery and vandalism.
Fair enough. How about reckless endangerment, forgery, and vandalism, which are all felonies in California.
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.
The UK CAA recently did some pretty extensive testing, 1.2kg class drones were a significant hazard to helicopters and non-airline airplane windscreens and propulsion surfaces. That means almost the entire firefighting fleet in most cases as only the larger 737 class tankers would be likely to have birdstrike rated windscreens and fanblades, and those are only used on the largest of forest fires.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Right, but how are ridiculous prison sentences and all the myriad life ruining consequences (Including potentially life in prison, 3 strikes and all that) making this equasion better? Big fines is plenty of deterent, It seems that we have this one tool, prison, and its the only one we know about even when its the wrong tool.Surely theres smarter ways than just piling more misery on the already bloated prison system
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
"soft gooey" has dropped quite a few planes, There's actual evidence of it. Come back when you have some for your case.
Oh I know. Soft and gooey can actually damage planes quite well. Now imagine hitting reinforced plastic or better still iron cores from motors.
Like I said. Actual damage is more likely from a 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.
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.
Uhhh... Where'd you get that idea from?
A bullet fired straight up will come back down with almost the same force minus a bit of wind resistance...
It comes down minus a lot of wind resistance, at terminal velocity, either tumbling or falling base down depending on how much excess stability it had from spin. 150 to 300 feet per second is typical so 1/10th the velocity and 1/100th of the kinetic energy.